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THE PROFESSOR 



BREAKFAST-TABLE 



THE PROFESSOR 



BREAKFAST-TABLE; 



WITH THE 



STORY OF IRIS, 



By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 

AUTHOR OF " THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

PHILADELPHIA: 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND COMPANY. 

M DCCC LXIV. 



6. 



S/97/ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



SOURCF UNKNOWN 
MAY 2 8 1925 



.4 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

What he said, what he heard^ and what he Saw. 

I. 

I INTENDED to have signalized my first appear- 
ance by a certain large statement, which I flatter 
myself is the nearest approach to a universal for- 
mula of life yet promulgated at this breakfast-table. 
It would have had a grand effect. For this pur- 
pose I fixed my eyes on a certain divinity-student, 
with the intention of exchanging a few phrases, 
and then forcing my court-card, namely. The great 
end of being'. — I will thank you for the sugar, — I 
said. — Man is a dependent creature. 

It is a small favor to ask, — said the divinity- 
student, — and passed the sugar to me. 

Life is a great bundle of little things, — I 

said. 

The divinity-student smiled, as if that was the 
concluding epigram of the sugar question. 

You smile, — I said. — Perhaps life seems to you 
a little bundle of great things ? 



2 THE PBOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The divinity-student started a laugh, but sud 
denly reined it back with a pull, as one throws a 
horse on his haunches. — Life is a great bundle of 
great things, — he said. 

{Now^ then!) The great end of being, after all, 
is 

Hold on I — said my neighbor, a young fellow 
whose name seems to be John, and nothing else, 
— for that is what they all call him, — hold on! the 
Sculpin is go'n' to say somethin'. 

Now the Sculpin (Cottus Virginianus) is a little 
water-beast which pretends to consider itself a fish, 
and, under that pretext, hangs about the piles upon 
which West-Boston Bridge is built, swallowing the 
bait and hook intended for flounders. On being 
drawn from the water, it exposes an immense head, 
a diminutive bony carcass, and a surface so full 
of spines, ridges, ruffles, and frills, that the natu- 
ralists have not been able to count them without 
quarrelling about the number, and that the colored 
youth, whose sport they spoil, do not like to touch 
them, and especially to tread on them, unless they 
happen to have shoes on, to cover the thick white 
soles of their broad black feet. 

When, therefore, I heard the young fellow's ex- 
clamation, I looked round the table with curiosity 
ta see what it meant. At the further end of it I 
saw a head, and a small portion of a little de- 
formed body, mounted on a high chair, which 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3 

brought the occupant up to a fair level enough 
for him to get at his food. His whole appearance 
was so grotesque, I felt for a minute as if there 
was a showman behind him who would pull him 
down presently and put up Judy, or the hang- 
man, or the Devil, or some other wooden person- 
age of the famous spectacle. I contrived to lose 
the first part of his sentence, but what I heard 
bes^an so : — 

by the Frog-Pond, when there were frogs in 

it, and the folks used to come down fi'om the tents 
on 'Lection and Independence days with their 
pails to get water to make egg-pop with. Born 
in Boston ; went to school in Boston as long as 
the boys would let me. — The little man groaned, 
turned, as if to look round, and went on. — Kan 
away from school one day to see Phillips hung 
for killing Denegri with a loggerhead. That was 
in flip days, when there were always two or three 
loggerheads in the fire. I'm a Boston boy, I tell 
you, — born at North End, and mean to be buried 
on Copps' Hill, with the good old underground 
people, — the Worthylakes, and the rest of 'em. 
Yes, Sir, — up on the old hill, where they buried 
Captain Daniel Malcolm in a stone grave, ten 
feet deep, to keep him safe from the red-coats, in 
those old times when the world was frozen up 
tight and there wasn't but one spot open, and 
that was right over FaneuU Hall, — and black 



4 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

enough it looked, I tell you! There's where my 
bones shall lie, Sir, and rattle away when the big 
guns go off at the Navy Yard opposite ! You 
can't make me ashamed of the old place! Full 
of crooked little streets ; — I was born and used to 

run round in one of 'em 

1 should think so, — said that young man 



whom I hear them call " John," — softly, not mean- 
ing to be heard, nor to be cruel, but thinking in 
a half-whisper, evidently. — I should think so; and 
got kinked up, turnin' so many corners. — The lit- 
tle man did not hear what was said, but went 
on, — 

full of crooked little streets ; but I tell you 

Boston has opened, and kept open, more turnpikes 
that lead straight to free thought and free speech 
and free deeds than any other city of live men or 
dead men, — I don't care how broad their streets 
are, nor how high their steeples ! 

How high is Bosting-meefn'-house? — said 

a person with black whiskers and imperial, a vel- 
vet waistcoat, a guard-chain rather too massive, 
and a diamond pin so very large that the most 
trusting nature might confess an inward sitg-g-es- 
tion, — of course, nothing amounting to a suspicion. 
For this is a gentleman from a great city, and 
sits next to the landlady's daughter, who evidently 
believes in him, and is the object of his especial 
attention. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 

How high ? — said the little man. — As high as 
the first step of the stairs that lead to the New 
Jerusalem. Isn't that high enough ? 

It is, — I said. — The great end of being is to 
harmonize man with the order of things ; and the 
church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be 
so still. But who shall tune the pitch-pipe? Quis 

cus (On the whole, as this quotation was not 

entirely new, and, being in a foreign language, 
might not be familiar to all the boarders, I thought 
I would not finish it.) 

Go to the Bible ! — said a sharp voice from 

a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed, sharp-elbowed, strenuous- 
looking woman in a black dress, appearing as if { 
it began as a piece of mourning and perpetuated ^ 
itself as a bit of economy. 

You speak well. Madam, — I said; — yet there is 
room for a gloss or commentary on what you say. 
" He who would bring back the wealth of the In- 
dies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." 
What you bring away from the Bible depends to 
some extent on what you carry to it. — Benja- 
min Franklin ! Be so good as to step up to my 
chamber and bring me down the small uncovered 
pamphlet of twenty pages which you will find 
lying under the " Cruden's Concordance." [The 
boy took a large bite, which left a very perfect 
crescent in the slice of bread-and-butter he held, 
and departed on his errand, with the portable 



6 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

fraction of his breakfast to sustain him on the 
way.] 

Here it is. " Go to the Bible. A Dissertation, 
etc., etc. By J. J. Flournoy. Athens, Georgia. 
1858." 

Mr. Flournoy, Madam, has obeyed the precept 
which you have judiciously delivered. You may 
be interested, Madam, to know what are the con- 
clusions at which Mr. J. J. Flournoy of Athens, 
Georgia, has arrived. You shall hear, Madam. 
He has gone to the Bible, and he has come back 
from the Bible, bringing a remedy for existing 
social evils, which, if it is the real specific, as it 
professes to be, is of great interest to humanity, 
and to the female part of humanity in particular. 
It is what he calls trigamy^ Madam, or the marry- 
ing of three wives, so that " good old men " may 
be solaced at once by the companionship of the 
wisdom of maturity, and of those less perfected 
but hardly less engaging qualities which are found 
at an earlier period of life. He has followed your 
precept. Madam ; I hope you accept his conclu- 
sions. 

Hie female boarder in black attire looked so 
puzzled, and, in fact, " all abroad," after the deliv- 
ery of this " counter " of mine, that I left her to re- 
cover her wits, and went on with the conversation, 
which I was beginning to get pretty well in hand. 

But in the mean time I kept my eye on the 



THE PROFESSaR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 7 

female boarder to see what effect I had produced. 
First, she was a little stunned at having her argu- 
ment knocked over. Secondly, she was a little 
shocked at the tremendous character of the triple 

matrimonial suggestion. Thirdly. I don't like 

to say what I thought. Something seemed to have 
pleased her fancy. Whether it was, that, if trig- 
amy should come into fashion, there would be 
three times as many chances to enjoy the luxury 
of saying, " No ! " is more than I can tell you. I 
may as well mention that B. F, came to me after 
breakfast to borrow the pamphlet for " a lady," — 
one of the boarders, he said, — looking as if he had 
a secret he wished to be relieved of. 

1 continued. — If a human soul is necessa- 
rily to be trained up in the faith of those from 
whom it inherits its body, why, there is the end 
of all reason. If, sooner or later, every soul is to 
look for truth with its own eyes, the first thing is 
to recognize that no presumption in favor of any 
particular belief arises from the fact of our inher- 
iting it. Otherwise you would not give the Ma- 
hometan a fair chance to become a convert to a 
better religion. 

The second thing would be to depolarize every 
fixed religious idea in the mind by changing the 
word which stands for it. 

1 don't know what you mean by " depolar- 
izing" an idea, — said the divinity- student. 



8 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I will tell you, — I said. — When a given symbol 
which represents a thought has lain for a certain 
length of time in the mind, it undergoes a change 
like that which rest in a certain position gives to 
iron. It becomes magnetic in its relations, — it is 
traversed by strange forces which did not belong 
to it. The word, and consequently the idea it 
represents, is polarized. 

The religious currency of mankind, in thought, 
in speech, and in print, consists entirely of polar- 
ized words. BoiTow one of these from another 
language and religion, and you will find it leaves 
all its magnetism behind it. Take that famous 
word, O'm, of the Hindoo mythology. Even a 
priest cannot pronounce it without sin ; and a holy 
Pundit would shut his ears and run away from 
you in horror, if you should say it aloud. What 
do you care for O'm 1 If you wanted to get the 
Pundit to look at his religion fairly, you must 
first depolarize this and all similar words for him. 
The argument for and against new translations of 
the Bible really turns on this. Skepticism is afraid 
to trust its truths in depolarized words, and so cries 
out against a new translation. I think, myself, if 
every idea our Book contains could be shelled out 
of its old symbol and put into a new, clean, un- 
magnetic word, we should have some chance of 
reading it as philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought 
to read it, — which we do not and cannot now, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 

any more than a Hindoo can read the " Gayatri " 
as a fair man and lover of truth should do. 
When society has once fairly dissolved the New 
Testament, which it never has done yet, it will 
perhaps crystallize it over again in new forms of 
language. 

1 didn't know you was a settled minister 

over this parish, — said the young fellow near me. 

A sermon by a lay-preacher may be worth lis- 
tening to, — I replied, calmly. — It gives the parallax 
of thought and feeling as they appear to the ob- 
servers from two very different points of view. If 
you wish to get the distance of a heavenly body, 
you know that you must take two observations 
from remote points of the earth's orbit, — in mid- 
summer and midwinter, for instance. To get the 
parallax of heavenly truths, you must take an ob- 
servation from the position of the laity as well as 
of the clergy. Teachers and students of theology 
get a certain look, certain conventional tones of 
voice, a clerical gait, a professional neckcloth, and 
habits of mind as professional as their externals. 
They are scholarly men and read Bacon, and 
know well enough what the " idols of the tribe " 
are. Of course they have their false gods, as all 
men that follow one exclusive calling are prone 
to do. — The clergy have played the part of the 
fly-wheel in our modern civilization. They have 
never suffered it to stop. They have often car- 
1* 



10 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ried on its movement, when other moving powers 
failed, by the momentum stored in their vast bc>dy. 
Sometimes, too, they have kept it back by their 
vis inerticBf when its wheels were like to grind 
the bones of some old canonized error into ferti- 
lizers for the soil that yields the bread of life. 
But the mainspring of the world's onward relig- 
ious movement is not in them, nor in any one 
body of men, let me tell you. It is the people 
that makes the clergy, and not the clergy that 
makes the people. Of course, the profession reacts 
on its source with variable energy. — But there 
never was a guild of dealers or a company of 
craftsmen that did not need sharp looking after. 

Our old friend. Dr. Holyoke, whom we gave 
the dinner to some time since, must have known 
many people that saw the great bonfire in Har- 
vard College yard. 

Bonfire ? — shrieked the little man. — The 

bonfire when Robert Calef's book was burned? 

The same, — I said, — when Robert Calef the Bos- 
ton merchant's book was burned in the yard of 
Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather, 
President of the College and Minister of the Gos- 
pel. You remember the old witchcraft revival of 
'92, and how stout Master Robert Calef, trader, 
of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and 
judges what a set of fools and worse than foolsi 
they were 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 11 

Remember it ? — said the little man. — I don't think 
I shall forget it, as long as I can stretch this fore- 
finger to point with, and see what it wears. — 
There was a ring on it. 

May I look at it? — I said. 

Where it is, — said the little man; — it will never 
come off, till it falls off from the bone in the dark- 
ness and in the dust. 

He pushed the high chair on which he sat 
slightly back from the table, and dropped himself, 
standing, to the floor, — his head being only a little 
above the level of the table, as he stoo4. With 
pain and labor, lifting one foot over the other, as 
a drummer handles his sticks, he took a few steps 
from his place, — his motions and the dead beat 
of the misshapen boots announcing to my prac- 
tised eye and ear the malformation which is called 
in learned language talipes varus, or inverted club- 
foot. • 

Stop! stop! — I said, — let me come to you. 

The little man hobbled back, and lifted himself 
by the left arm, with an ease approaching to gi'ace 
which surprised me, into his high chair. I walked 
to his side, and he stretched out the forefinger of 
his right hand, with the ring upon it. The ring 
had been put on long ago, and could not pass 
the misshapen joint. It was one of those funeral 
rings which used to be given to relatives and 
friends after the decease of persons of any note 



12 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

or importance. Beneath a round bit of glass was 
a death's head. Engraved on one side of this, 
«L. B. ^t. 22,"— on the other, "Ob. 1692." 

My grandmother's grandmother, — said the little 
man. — Hanged for a witch. It doesn't seem a 
great while ago. I knew my grandmother, and 
loved her. Her mother was daughter to the witch 
that Chief Justice Sewall hanged and Cotton 
Mather delivered over to the Devil. — That was 
Salem, though, and not Boston. No, not Boston. 
Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, it was that 
blew them all to 

Never mind where he blew them to, — I said; — 
for the little man was getting red in the face, and 
I didn't know what might come next. 

This episode broke me up, as the jockeys say, 
out of my square conversational trot; but* I set- 
tled down to it again. 

A man that knows men, in the street, at 

their work, human nature in its shirt-sleeves, — who 
makes bargains with deacons, instead of talking 
over texts with them, — a man who has found out 
that there are plenty of praying rogues and swear- 
ing saints in the world, — above all, who has found 
out, by living into the pith and core of life, that 
aU of the Deity which can be folded up between 
the sheets of any human book is to the Deity of 
the firrnament, of the strata, of the hot aortic flood 
of throbbing human life, of this infinite, instanta- 



TllE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 13 

neous consciousness in which the soul's beinsr con- 

o 

sists, — an incandescent point in the filament con- 
necting the negative pole of a past eternity with 
the positive pole of an eternity that is to come, — 
that all of the Deity which any human book can 
hold is to this larger Deity of the working battery 
of the universe only as the films in a book of 
gold-leaf are to the broad seams and curdled lumps 
of ore that lie in unsunned mines and virgin pla- 
cers, Oh! — I was saying that a man who 

lives out-of-doors, among live people, gets some 
things into his head he might not find in the 
index of his " Body of Divinity." 

I tell you what, — the idea of the professions' 
digging a moat round their close corporations, like 
that Japanese one at Jeddo, which you could put 
Park-Street Church on the bottom of and look 
over the vane from its side, and try to stretch 
another such spire across it without spanning the' 
chasm, — that idea, I say, is pretty nearly worn 
out. Now when a civilization or a civilized cus- 
tom falls into senile dementia^ there is commonly 
a judgment ripe for it, and it comes as plagues 
come, from a breath, — as fires come, from a spark. 

Here, look at medicine. Big wdgs, gold-headed 
canes, Latin prescriptions, shops full of abomina- 
tions, recipes a yard long, " curing " patients by 
drugging as sailors bring a wind by whistling, 
selling lies at a guinea apiece, — a routine, in short, 



14 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of giving unfortunate sick people a mess of things 
either too odious to swallow or too acrid to hold, 
or, if that were possible, both at once. 

You don't know what I mean, indignant 

and not unintelligent country-practitioner? Then 
you don't know the history of medicine, — and that 
is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any 
outbreak of eloquence ; for, by the mortar in which 
Anaxarchus was pounded ! I did not bring home 
Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all 
the old folios in calf and vellum I will show you, 
to be bullied by the proprietor of a " Wood and 
Bache," and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints 
by Philadelphia Editors. Besides, many of the 
profession and I know a little something of each 
other, and you don't think I am such a simpleton 
as to lose their good opinion by saying what the 
better heads among them would condemn as unfair 
and untrue ? Now mark how the great plague 
came on the generation of drugging doctors, and 
in what form it fell. 

A scheming drug-vendor, (inventive genius,) an 
utterly untrustworthy and incompetent observer, 
(profound searcher of Nature,) a shallow dabbler 
in erudition, (sagacious scholar,) started the mon- 
strous fiction (founded the immortal system) of 
Homoeopathy. I am very fair, you see, — you can 
help yourself to either of these sets of phrases. 

All the reason in the world would not have had 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 

SO rapid and general an effect on the public mind 
to disabuse it of the idea that a drug is a good 
thing in itself, instead of being, as it is, a bad 
thing, as was produced by the trick (system) of 
this German charlatan (theorist). Not that the 
wiser part of the profession needed him to teach 
them ; but the routinists and their employers, the 
"general practitioners," who lived by selling pills 
and mixtm*es, and their drug-consuming customers, 
had to recognize that people could get well, un- 
poisoned. These dumb cattle would not learn it 
of themselves, and so the murrain of Homoeopathy 
fell on them. 

You don't know what plague has fallen on 

the practitioners of theology ? I will tell you, then. 
It is SPIRITUALISM. While some are crying out 
against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some 
are laughing at it as an hysteric folly, and some 
are getting angry with it as a mere trick of inter- 
ested or mischievous persons. Spiritualism is quietly 
undermining the traditional ideas of the future 
state which have been and are still accepted, — 
not merely in those who believe in it, but in the 
general sentiment of the community, to a larger 
extent than most good people seem to be aware of. 
It needn't be true, to do this, any more than Ho- 
moeopathy need, to do its work. The Spiritualists 
have some pretty strong instincts to pry over, which 
oo doubt have been roughly handled by theolo- 



16 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

gians at different times. . And the Nemesis of the 
pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, be- 
ginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and ending 
with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of 
it is heard in all the ministers' studies of Chris- 
tendom! Sir, you cannot have people of cultiva- 
tion, of pure character, sensible enough in common 
things, large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd 
business-men, men of science, professing to be in 
communication with the spiritual world and keep- 
ing up constant intercourse with it, without its 
gradually reacting on the whole conception of that 
other life. It is the folly of the world, constantly, 
which confounds its wisdom. | Not only out of the 
mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the 
mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our 
truest lessons.j For the fool's judgment is a dog- 
vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat 
watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by 
them, — so that one shall often see by their point- 
ing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, 
when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of 
what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning 
to all points of the compass. 

Amen ! — said the young fellow called John. 

— Ten minutes by the watch. Those that are 
unanimous will please to signify by holding up 
their left foot! 

I looked this young man steadily in the face 



I 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 17 

for about thirty seconds. His countenance was as 
calm as that of a reposing infant. I think it was 
simplicity, rather than mischief, with perhaps a 
youthful playfulness, that led him to this outbreak. 
I have often noticed that even quiet horses, on a 
sharp November morning, when their coats are 
just beginning to get the winter roughness, will 
give little sportive demi-kicks, with slight sudden 
elevation of the subsequent region of the body, 
and a sharp short whinny, — by no means intend- 
ing to put their heels through the dasher, or to 
address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a 
familiar word, frisky. This, I think, is the physi- 
ological condition of the young person, John. I 
noticed, however, what I should call a palpebral 
spasMj affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, 
which, if it were intended for the facial gesture 
called a wink, might lead me to suspect a dispo- 
sition to be satirical on his part. 

Resuming the conversation, I remarked, — I 

am, ex officio, as a Professor, a conservative. For 
I don't know any fruit that clings to its tree so 
faithfully, not even a "froze-'n'-thaw" winter-apple, 
as a Professor to the bough of which his chair is 
made. You can't shake him off, and it is as much 
as you can do to pull him off. Hence, by a chain 
of induction I need not unwind, he tends to con- 
servatism generally. 

But then, you know, if you are sailing the 



18 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Atlantic, and all at once find yourself in a current, 
and the sea covered with weeds, and drop your 
Fahrenheit over the side and find it eight or ten 
degrees higher than in the ocean generally, there 
is no use in flying in the face of facts and swear- 
ing there is no such thing as a Gulf- Stream, when 
you are in it. 

You can't keep gas in a bladder, and you can't 
keep knowledge tight in a profession. Hydrogen 
will leak out, and air will leak in, through India- 
rubber; and special knowledge will leak out, and 
general knowledge will leak in, though a profes- 
sion were covered with twenty thicknesses of 
sheepskin diplomas. By Jove, Sir, till common 
sense is well mixed up with medicine, and com- 
mon manhood with theology, and common honesty 
with law. We the people, Sir, some of us with 
nut-crackers, and some of us with trip-hammers, 
and some of us with pile-drivers, and some of us 
coming with a whish ! like air-stones out of a lunar 
volcano, will crash down on the lumps of nonsense 
in all of them till we have made powder of them 
like Aaron's calf! 

If to be a conservative is to let all the drains 
of thought choke up and keep all the soul's win- 
dows down, — to shut out the sun from the east 
and the wind from the west, — to let the rats run 
free in the cellar, and the moths feed their fill in the 
chambers, and the spiders weave their lace before 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 1-9 

the mirrors, till the soul's typhus is bred out of 
our neglect, and we begin to snore in its coma or 
rave in its delirium, — I, Sir, am a bonnet-rovge^ a 
red-cap of the barricades, my friends, rather than 
a conservative. 

Were you born in Boston, Sir? — said the 

little man, — looking eager and excited. 

I was not, — I replied. 

It's a pity, — it's a pity, — said the little man ; — 
it's the place to be born in. But if you can't fix 
it so as to be born here, you can come and live 
here. Old Ben Franklin, the father of American 
science and the American Union, wasn't ashamed 
to be born here. Jim Otis, the father of American 
Independence, bothered about in the Cape Cod. 
marshes awhile, but he came to Boston as soon 
as he got big enough. Joe "Warren, the first 
bloody ruffled-shirt of the Revolution, was as good 
as born here. Parson Channing strolled along this 
way from Newport, and staid here. Pity old Sam 
Hopkins hadn't come, too ; — we'd have made a 
man of him, — poor, dear, good old Christian hea- 
then ! There he lies, as peaceful as a young baby, 
in the old burying-ground ! I've stood on the slab 
many a time. Meant well, — meant well. Jugger- 
naut. Parson Channing put a little oil on one 
linchpin, and slipped it out so softly, the first 
thing they knew about it was the wheel of that 
side was down. T'other fellow's at work now; 



20 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

but he makes more noise about it. When the 
linchpin comes out on his side, there'll be a jerk, 
I tell you! Some think it will spoil the old cart, 
and they pretend to say that there are valuable 
things, in it which may get hurt. Hope not, — 
hope not. But this is the great Macadamizing 
place, — always cracking up something. 

Cracking up Boston folks, — said the gentleman 
with the diamond-pin, whom, for convenience' sake, 
I shall hereafter call the Koh-i-noor. 

The little man turned round mechanically tow- 
ards him, as Maelzel's Turk used to turn, carrying 
his head slowly and horizontally, as if it went by 
cog-wheels. — Cracking up all sorts of things, — 
native and foreign vermin included, — said the lit- 
tle man. 

This remark was thought by some of us to have 
a hidden personal application, and to afford a fair 
opening for a lively rejoinder, if the Koh-i-noor 
had been so disposed. The little man uttered it 
with the distinct wooden calmness with which the 
ingenious Turk used to exclaim, E-chec! so that 
it must have been heard. The party supposed to 
be interested in the remark was, however, carrying 
a large knife-blade-full of something to his mouth 
just then, which, no doubt, interfered with the 
reply he would have made. 

My friend who used to board here was 

accustomed sometimes, in a pleasant way, to call 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 21 

himself the Autocrat of the table, — meaning, I sup- 
pose, that he had it all his own way among th^ 
boarders. I think our small boarder here is like 
to prove a refractory subject, if I undertake to use 
the sceptre my friend meant to bequeathe me, too 
magisterially. I won't deny that sometimes, on 
rare occasions, when I have been in company with 
gentlemen who preferred listening, I have been 
guilty of the same kind of usurpation which my 
friend openly justified. But I maintain, that I, the 
Professor, am a good listener. If a man can tell 
me a fact which subtends an appreciable angle 
in ihe horizon of thought, I am as receptive as 
the contribution-box in a congregation of colored 
brethren. If, when I am exposing my intellectual 
dry-goods, a man will begin a good story, I will 
have them all in, and my shutters up, before he 
has got to the fifth "says he," and listen like a 
three-years' child, as the author of the " Old Sailor " 
says. I had rather hear one of those grand ele- 
mental laughs from either of our two Georges, 
(fictitious names. Sir or Madam,) or listen to one 
of those old playbills of our College days, in which 
" Tom and Jerry " (" Thomas and Jeremiah," as the 
old Greek Professor was said to call it,) was an- 
nounced to be brought on the stage with the whole 
force of the Faculty, read by our Frederick, (no 
such person, of course,) than say the best things 
I might by any chance find myself capable of 



22 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

saying. Of course, if I come across a real thinker, 
^ suggestive, acute, illuminating, informing talker, 
I enjoy the luxury of sitting still for a while as 
much as another. 

/Nobody talks much that doesn't say unwise 
things, — things he did not mean to say J as no 
person plays much without striking a false note 
sometimes. (Talk, to me, is only spading up the 
ground for crops of thought. I can't answer for 
what will turn up. K I could, it wouldn't be 
talking, but " speaking my piece." Better, I think, 
the hearty abandonment of one's self to the sug- 
gestions of the moment, at the risk of an occa- 
sional slip of the tongue, perceived the instant 
it escapes, but just one syllable too late, than 
the royal reputation of never saying a foolish 
thing. 

What shall I do with this little man ? — 

There is only one thing to do, — and that is, to 
let him talk when he will. The day of the " Au- 
tocrat's" monologties is over. 

My friend, — said I to the young fellow 

whom, as I have said, the boarders call "John," 
— My friend, — I said, one morning, after break- 
fast, — can you give me any information respecting 
the deformed person who sits at the other end of 
the table? 

What! the Sculpin ? — said the young fellow. 

The diminutive person, with angular curvature 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 23 

of the spine, — I said, — and double talipes varus, 
— I beg your pardon, — with two club-feet. 

Is that long word what you call it when a 
fellah walks so ? — said the young man, making 
his fists revolve round an imaginary axis, as you 
may have seen youth of tender age and limited 
pugilistic knowledge, when they show how they 
would punish an adversary, themselves protected 
by this rotating guard, — the middle knuckle, mean- 
time, thumb-supported, fiercely prominent, death- 
threatening. 

It is, — said I. — But would you have the kind- 
ness to tell me if you know anything about this 
deformed person? 

About the Sculpin ? — said the young fellow. 

My good friend, — said I, — I am sure, by your 
countenance, you would not hurt the feelings of 
one who has been hardly enough treated by Na- 
ture to be spared by his fellows. Even in speak- 
ing of him to others, I could wish that you might 
not employ a term which implies contempt for 
what should inspire only pity. 

A fellah's no business to be so— ^ — crooked, — 
said the young man called John. 

Yes, yes, — I said, thoughtfully, — the strong hate 
the weak. It's all right. The arrangement has 
reference to the race, and not to the individual. 
Infirmity must be kicked out, or the stock run 
down. Wholesale moral arrangements are so dif- 



24 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ferent from retail! — I understand the instinct, my 
friend, — it is cosmic, — it is planetaiy, — it is a 
conservative principle in creation. 

jThe young fellow's face gradually lost its ex- 
pression as I was speaking, until it became as 
blank of vivid significance as the countenance of 
a gingerbread rabbit with two currants in the place 
of eyes.; He had not taken my meaning. 
"* Presently the intelligence came back with a snap 
that made him wink, as he answered, — Jest so. 
All right. A 1. Put her through. That's the way 
to talk. Did you speak to me, Sir? — Here the 
young man stTuck up that well-known song which 
I think they used to sing at Masonic festivals, 
beginning, " Aldiborontiphoscophornio, Where left 
you Chrononhotonthologos ? " 

I beg your pardon, — I said; — all I meant was, 
that men, as temporary occupants of a permanent 
abode called human life, which is improved or in- 
jured by occupancy, according to the style of ten- 
ant, have a natural dislike to those who, if they 
live the life of the race as well as of the individ- 
ual, will leave lasting injurious effects upon the 
abode spoken of, which is to be occupied by count- 
less future generations. This is the final cause of 
the underlying brute instinct which we have in 
common with the herds. 

The gingerbread-rabbit expression was com- 
ing on so fast, that I thought I must try again. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25 

It's a pity that families are kept up, where there 

are such hereditary infirmities. Still, let us treat 
this poor man fairly, and not call him names. Do 
you know what his name is? 

I know what the rest of 'em call him, — said 
the young fellow. — They call him Little Boston. 
There's no harm in that, is there ? 

It is an honorable term, — I replied. — But why 
Little Boston^ in a place where most are Bostonians ? 

Because nobody else is quite so Boston all over 
as he is, — said the young fellow. 

"L. B. Ob. 1692." — Little Boston let hina be, 
when we talk about him. The ring he wears 
labels him well enough. There is stuff in the 
little man, or he wouldn't stick so manfully by 
this crooked, crotchety old town. Give him a 
chance. — You will drop the Sculpin, won't you ? 
— I said to the young fellow. 

Drop him? — he answered, — I ha'n't took him 
up yet. 

No, no, — the term, — I said, — the term. Don't 
call him so any more, if you please. Call him 
Little Boston, if you like. 

All right, — said the young fellow. — I wouldn't 
be hard on the poor little 

The word he used was objectionable in point 
of significance and of grammar. It was a frequent 
termination of certain adjectives among the Ro- 
mans, — as of those designating a person follow- 



26 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing the sea, or given to rural pursuits. It is classed 
by custom among the profane words ; why, it is 
hard to say, — but it is largely used in the street 
by those who speak of their fellows in pity or in 
wrath. 

I never heard the young fellow apply the name 
of the odious pretended fish to the little man from 
that day forward. 

Here we are, then, at our boarding-house* 

First, myself, the Professor, a little way from the 
head of the table, on the right, looking down, 
where the "Autocrat" used to sit. At the further 
end sits the Landlady. At the head of the table, 
just now, the Koh-i-noor, or the gentleman with 
the diamond. Opposite me is a Venerable Gen- 
tleman with a bland countenance, who as yet has 
spoken little. The Divinity- Student is my neigh- 
bor on the right, — and further down, that Young 
Fellow of whom I have repeatedly spoken. The 
Landlady's Daughj^er sits near the Koh-i-noor, as 
I said. The Poor Relation near the Landlady. 
At the right upper corner is a fresh-looking youth 
of whose name and history I have as yet learned 
nothing. Next the further left-hand corner, near 
the lower end of the table, sits the deformed per- 
son. The chair at his side, occupying that corner, 
is empty. I need not specially mention the other 
boarders, with the exception of Benjamin Franklin, 
the landlady's son, who sits near his mother. We 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 27 

are a tolerably assorted set, — difference enough and 
likeness enough ; but still it seems to me there 
is something wanting. The Landlady's Daughter 
is the prima donna in the way of feminine attrac- 
tions. I am not quite satisfied with this young 
lady. She wears more " jewelry," as certain young 
ladies call their trinkets, than I care to see on a 
person in her position. Her voice is strident, her 
laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that 
foolish way of dancing and bobbing like a quill- 
float with a " minnum " biting the hook below it, 
which one sees and weeps over sometimes in per- 
sons of more pretensions. I can't help hoping we 
shall put something into that empty chair yet 
which wUl add the missing string to our social 
harp. I hear talk of a rare Miss who is expected. 
Something in the school-girl way, I believe. We 
shall see. 

My friend who calls himself The Autocrat 



has given me a caution which I am going to 
repeat, with my comment upon it, for the benefit 
of all concerned. 

Professor, — said he, one day, — don't you think 
your brain will run dry before a year's out, if you 
don't get the pump to help the cow ? Let me 
tell you what happened to me once. I put a little 
money into a bank, and bought a check-book, so 
that I might draw it as I wanted, in sums to suit. 



28 THE PROFESSOR. AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Things went on nicely for a time ; scratching with 
a pen was as easy as rubbing Aladdin's Lamp ; 
and my blank check-book seemed to be a diction- 
ary of possibilities, in which I could find all the 
synonymes of happiness, and realize any one of 
them on the spot. A check came back to me at 
last with these two words on it, — No funds. My 
check-book was a volume of waste-paper. 

Now, Professor, — said he, — I have drawn some- 
thing out of your bank, you know ; and just so 
sure as you keep drawing out your soul's currency 
without making new deposits, the next thing will 
be, No fundsy — and then where will you be, my 
boy ? These little bits of paper mean your gold 
and your silver and your copper. Professor ; and 
you wiU certainly break up and go to pieces, if 
you don't hold on to your metallic basis. 

There is something in that, — said I. — Only I 
rather think life can coin thought somewhat faster 
than I can count it off in words. What if one 
shaU go round and dry up with soft napkins all 
the dew that falls of a June evening on the leaves 
of his garden? Shall there be no more dew on 
those leaves thereafter ? Marry, yea, — many drops, 
large and round and full of moonlight as those 
thou shalt have absters^ed ! 

Here am I, the Professor, — a man who has 
lived long enough to have plucked the flowers of 
life and come to the berries, — which are not 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29 

always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as 
the crocus of April, or rosy-cheeked as the damask 
of June; a man who staggered against books as 
a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives 
to decrepitude ; j with a brain as full of tingling 
thoughts, such as they are, as a limb^ which we 
call " asleep," because it is so particularly awake, 
is of pricking points ; presenting a key-board of 
nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, to the 
finger-touch of all outward agencies ; knowing some- 
thing of the filmy threads of this web of life in 
which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for the gray 
old spider to come along ;| contented enough with 
daily realities, but twirling on his finger the key 
of a private Bedlam of 'ideals ; in knowledge feed- 
ing with the fox oftener than with the stork, — 
loving better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation 
than the depth of a narrow artesian well ; finding 
nothing too small for his contemplation in the 
markings of the g-rammatophora subtilissima, and 
nothing too large in the movement of the solar 
system towards the star Lambda of the constella- 
tion Hercules; — and the question is, whether there 
is anything left for me, the Professor, to suck out 
of creation, after my lively friend has had his straw 
in the bunghole of the Universe ! 

A man's mental reactions with the atmosphere 
of life must go on, whether he will or no, as 
between his blood and the air he breathes. As to 



30 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

catching the residuum of the process, or what we 
call thought^ — the gaseous ashes of burned-out 
thinkings — the excretion of mental respiration, — 
that will depend on many things, as, on having a 
favorable intellectual temperature about one, and 
a fitting receptacle.— ^ I sow more thought-seeds in 
twenty-four hours' travel over the desert-sand along 
which my lonely consciousness paces day and night, 
than I shall throw into soil where it will germi- 
nate, in a year. All sorts of bodily and mental 
perturbations come between us and the due pro- 
jection of our thought. The pulse-like "fits of 
easy and difficult transmission " seem to reach even 
the transparent medium through which our souls are 
seen. We know our humanity by its often inter- 
cepted rays, as we tell a revolving light from a star 
or meteor by its constantly recurring obscuration. 

An illustrious scholar once told me, that, in the 
first lecture he ever delivered, he spoke but half 
his allotted time, and felt as if he had told all 
he knew. Braham came forward once to sing 
one of his most famous and familiar songs, and 
for his life could not recall the first line of it; — 
he told his mishap to the audience, and they 
screamed it at him in a chorus of a thousand 
voices. Milton could not write to suit himself, 
except from the autumnal to the vernal equinox. 
One in the clothing-business, who, there is reason 
to suspect, may have inherited, by descent, the 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31 

great poet's impressible temperament, let a cus- 
tomer slip through his fingers one day without 
fitting him with a new garment. " Ah I " said he 
to a friend of mine, who was standing by, " if it 
hadn't been for that confounded headache of mine 
this morning, Pd have had a coat on that man, in 
spite of himself, before he left the store." A pass- 
ing throb, only, — but it deranged the nice mech- 
anism required to persuade the accidental human 
being, x, into a given piece of broadcloth, a. 

We must take care not to confound this fre- 
quent difficulty of transmission of our ideas with 
want of ideas. I suppose that a man's mind does 
in time form a neutral salt with the elements in 
the universe for which it has special elective affin- 
ities. 5 In fact, \ look upon a library as a kind of 
mental chemist's shop, filled with the crystals of 
all forms and hues which have come from the 
union of individual thought with local circumstan- 
ces or universal principles./ 

When a man has worked out his special affini- 
ties in this way, there is an end of his genius as 
a real solvent. No more effervescence and hissing 
tumult as he pours his sharp thought on the 
World's biting alkaline unbeliefs! No more corro- 
sion of the old monumental tablets covered with 
lies ! No more taking up of dull earths, and turn-^ 
ing them, first into clear solutions, and then into 
'ustrous prisms ! 



32 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I, the Professor, am very much like other men. 
I shall not find out when I have used up my 
affinities. What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, 
when she invented, manufactured, and patented 
her authors, contrived to make critics out of the 
chips that were left! Painful as the task is, they 
never fail to warn the author, in the most impres- 
sive manner, of the probabilities of failure in what 
he has undertaken. Sad as the necessity is to 
their delicate sensibilities, they never hesitate to 
advertise him of the decline of his powers, and to 
press upon him the propriety of retiring before he 
sinks into imbecility. Trusting to their kind offices, 
I shall endeavor to fulfil 

Bridget enters and begins clearing the table, 

The following poem is my ( The Profes- 



sor's) only contribution to the great department of 
Ocean- Cable literature. As all the poets of this 
country will be engaged for the next six weeks in 
writing for the premium offered by the Crystal-Pal- 
ace Company for the Burns Centenary, (so called, 
according to our Benjamin Franklin, because there 
will be na'ry a cent for any of us,) poetry will be 
very scarce and dear. Consumers may, conse- 
quently, be glad to take the present article, which, 
^y the aid of a Latin tutor and a Professor of 
Chemistry, will be found intelligible to the edu- 
cated classes. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 33 



DE SAUTY. 

AN ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ECLOGUE. 

Professor. Blue-Nose. 

PROFESSOR. 

Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal ! 
Lives there one De Sauly extant now among you, 
"Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, 
Holding talk with nations ? 

» 

Is there a De Sauty ambulant on Tellus, 
Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in night-cap. 
Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature 
Three times daily patent ? 

Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal? 
Or is he a mytJius, — ancient word for "humbug," — 
Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed 
Romulus and Remus ? 

Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty ? 
Or a living product of galvanic action. 
Like the acarus bred in Crosse's flint-solution? 
Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal ! 

BLUE-NOSE. 

Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, 
Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster ! 
Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear -flap toward me, 
Thou shalt hear them answered. 
2* 



34 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, 
At the polar focus of the wire electric 
Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us : 
Called himself " I)e Sauty." 

As the small opossum held in pouch maternal 
Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammaliaf 
So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, 
Sucking in the current. 

When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced 

stranger, — 
Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy, — » 
And from time to time, in sharp articulation, 
Said, ''All right ! De Sauty." 

From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading 
Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples. 
Till the land was filled with loud reverberations 
Of ''All right ! De Sauty." 

When the current slackened, drooped the mystic. stranger, — 
Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker, — 
Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor 
Of disintegration. 

Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead, 
Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence. 
Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, 
There was no De Sauty. 

Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, 

C. O. H. N. Ferrum, Chor. Flu. Sil. Potaasa, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35 

Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang. (?) Alumin. (?) 
Cuprum, (?) 
Such as man is made of. 

Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished ! 
There is no De Sauty now there is no current 1 
Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him 
Cry, ''All right ! De Sauty." 



11. 

Back again! — A turtle — which means a tor- 
toise — is fond of his shell; but if you put a live 
coal on his back, he crawls out of it. So the boys 
say. 

It is a libel on the turtle. He grows to his 
shell, and his shell is in his body as much as his 
body is in his shell. — I don't think there is one 
of our boarders quite so testudineous as I am. 
Nothing but a combination of motives, more per- 
emptory than the coal on the turtle's back, could 
have got me to leave the shelter of my carapace ; 
and after memorable interviews, and kindest hos- 
pitalities, and grand sights, and huge influx of 
patriotic pride, — for every American owns all 
America, — 

"Creation*s heir, — the world, the world is" 



36 THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

his, if anybody's, — I come back with the feehng 
which a boned turkey might experience, if, retain- 
ing his consciousness, he w^ere allowed to resume 
his skeleton. 

Welcome, O Fighting Gladiator, and Recum- 
bent Cleopatra, and Dying Wamor, whose classic 
outlines (reproduced in the calcined mineral of Lu- 
tetia) crown my loaded shelves! Welcome, ye tri- 
umphs of pictorial art (repeated by the magic grav- 
er) that look down upon me from the walls of my 
sacred cell! Vesalius, as Titian drew him, high- 
fronted, still-eyed, thick-bearded, with signet-ring, 
as beseems a gentleman, with book and carelessly- 
held eyeglass, marking him a scholar; thou, too, 
Jan Kuyper, commonly called Jan Praktiseer, old 
man of a century and seven years besides, father 
of twenty sons and two daughters, cut in copper 
by Houbraken, bought from a portfolio on one of 
the Paris quais ; and ye Three Trees of Rembrandt, 
black in shadow against the blaze of sunlight ; and 
thou Rosy Cottager of Sir Joshua, — thy roses 
hinted by the peppery burin of Bartolozzi ; ye, too, 
of lower grades in natm-e, yet not unlovely nor 
unrenowned. Young Bull of Paulus Potter, and 
Sleeping Cat of Cornelius Visscher ; welcome 
once more to my eyes ! The old books look 
out from the shelves, and I seem to read on 
their backs something besides their titles, — a kind 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 37 

of solemn greeting. The crimson carpet flushes 
warm under my feet. The arm-chair hugs me ; 
the swivel-chair spins round with me, as if it 
were giddy with pleasure ; the vast recumbent 
fauteuil stretches itself out under my weight, as 
one joyous with food and wine stretches* in after- 
dinner laughter. 

The boarders werg pleased to say that they 
were glad to get me back. One of them ven- 
tured a compliment, namely, — that I talked as 
if I believed what I said. — This was apparently 
considered something unusual, by its being men- 
tioned. 

One who means to talk with entire sincerity, — - 
I said, — always feels himself in danger of two 
things, namely, — an affectation of bluntness, like 
that of which Cornwall accuses Kent in " Lear," 
and actual rudeness. What a man wants to do, 
in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give as 
much of the best and most real life that belongs 
to the two talkers as the time will let him. Life 
is short, and conversation apt to run to mere 
words. Mr. Hue I think it is, who tells us some 
very good stories about the way in which two 
Chinese gentlemen contrive to keep up a long talk 
without saying a word which has any meaning in 
it. Something like this is occasionally heard on 
this side of the Great Wall. The best Chinese 
talkers I know are some pretty women whom T 



38 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

meet from time to time. Pleasant, airy, compli- 
mentary, the little flakes of flattery glimmering 
in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau- 
de-vie de Dantzic; their accents flowing on in a 
soft ripple, — never a wave, and never a calm ; 
words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase 
or a high-flavored epithet ; they turn air into 
syllables so gracefully, that ^we find meaning for 
the music they make as we find faces in the 
coals and fairy palaces in the clouds. There is 
something very odd, though, about this mechan- 
ical talk. 

You have sometimes been in a train on the 
railroad when the engine was detached a long 
way from the station you were approaching ? 
Well, you have noticed how quietly and rapidly 
the cars kept on, just as if the locomotive were 
drawing them ? Indeed, you would not have sus- 
pected that you were travelling on the strength of 
a dead fact, if you had not seen the engine run- 
ning away from you on a side-track. Upon my 
conscience, I believe some of these pretty w^omen 
detach their minds entirely, sometimes, from their 
talk, — and, what is more, that we never know the 
difference. Their lips let off" the fluty syllables just 
as their fingers would sprinkle the music-drops 
from their pianos ; unconscious habit turns the 
phrase of thought into words just as it does that 
of music into notes. — Well, they govern the world, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 39 

for all that, — these sweet-lipped women, — be- 
cause beauty is the index of a larger fact than 
wisdom. 

The Bombazine wanted an explanation. 

Madam, — said I, — wisdom is the abstract of 
the past, but beauty is the promise of the fu- 
ture. 

All this, however, is not what I was going 

to say. Here am I, suppose, seated — we will say 
at a dinner-table — alongside of an intelligent Eng- 
lishman. We look in each other's faces, — we ex- 
change a dozen words. One thing is settled : we 
mean not to offend each other, — to be perfectly 
courteous, — more than courteous; for we are the 
entertainer and the entertained, and cherish par- 
ticularly amiable feelings to each other. The clar- 
•et is good ; and if our blood reddens a little 
with its warm crimson, we are none the less kind 
for it. 

1 don't think people that talk over their 

victuals are like to say anything very great, espe- 
cially if they get their heads muddled with strong 
drink before they begin jabberin'. 

The Bombazine uttered this with a sugary 
sourness, as if the words had been steeped in 
a solution of acetate of lead. — The boys of 
my time used to call a hit like this a "side- 
winder.'* 

1 must finish this woman. — 



40 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Madam, — I said, — the Great Teacher seems to 
have been fond of talking as he sat at meat. Be- 
cause this was a good while ago, in a far-off place, 
you forget what the true fact of it was, — that 
those were real dinners, where people were hungry 
and thirsty, and where you met a very miscella- 
neous company. Probably there was a great deal 
of loosfe talk among the guests ; at any rate, there 
was always wine, we may believe. 

Whatever may be the hygienic advantages or 
disadvantages of wine, — and I for one, except 
for certain particular ends, believe in water, and, I 
blush to say it, in black tea, — there is no doubt 
about its being the grand specific against dull 
dinners. A score of people come together in all 
moods of mind and body. The problem is, in 
the space of one hour, more or less, to bring' 
them all into the same condition of slightly exalt- 
ed life. Food alone is enough for one person, 
perhaps, — talk, alone, for another ; but the grand 
equalizer and fraternizer, which works up the ra- 
diators to their maximum radiation, and the ab- 
sorbents to their maximum receptivity, is now just 
where it was when 

" The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed," 

— when six great vessels containing water, the 
whole amounting to more than a hogshead-full, 
were changed into the best of wine. I once 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 41 

WTote a song about wine, in which I spoke so 
warmly of it, that I was afraid some would think 
it was written inter pociila ; whereas it was com- 
posed in the bosom of my family, under the most 
tranquillizing domestic influences. 

The divinity-student turned towards me, 

looking mischievous. — Can you tell me, — he said, 
— who wrote a song for a temperance celebra- 
tion once, of which the following is a verse? — 

Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair 
The joys of the banquet to chasten and share ! 
Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine, 
And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine I 

/ did, — I answered. — What are you going to 
do about it ? — I will tell you another line I wrote 
long ago : — 

Don't be " consistent," — but be simply true. 

The longer I live, the more I am satisfied of 
two things : first, that the truest lives are those 
that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many fa- 
cets answering to the many-planed aspects of the 
world about them ; secondly, that society is al- 
ways trying in some way or other to grind tis 
down to a single flat surface. It is hard work to 
resist this grinding-down action. — Now give me 
a chance. Better eternal and universal abstinence 
than the brutalities of those days that made wivea 



42 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



and mothers and daughters and sisters blush for 
those whom they should have honored, as they 
came reelmg home from their debauches! Yet 
better even excess than lying and hypocrisy ; and 
if wine is upon all our tables, let us praise it for 
its color and fragrance and social tendency, so far 
as it deserves, and not hug a bottle in the closet 
and pretend not to know the use of a wine-glass 
at a public dinner ! I think you will find that 
people who honestly mean ta be true really con- 
tradict themselves much more rarely than those 
who try to be " consistent.'^ But a great many 
things we say can be made to appear contradic- 
tory, simply because they are partial views of a 
truth, and may often look unlike at first, as a 
front view of a face and its profile often do. 

Here is a distinguished divine, for whom I have 
great respect, for I owe him a charming hour at 
one of our literary anniversaries, and he has often 
spoken noble words ; but he holds up a remark of 
my friend the "Autocrat," — which I grieve to say 
he twice misquotes, by omitting the very word 
which gives it its significance, — the word fluids 
intended to typify the mobility of the restricted 
wfill, — holds it up, I say, as if it attacked the real- 
ity of the self-determining principle, instead of 
illustrating its limitations by an image. Now I 
will not explain any farther, still less defend, and 
least of all attack, but simply quote a few lines 



1 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 43 

from one of my friend's poems, printed more than 
ten years ago, and ask the distinguished gentle- 
man where he has ever asserted more strongly or 
absolutely the independent will of the " subcre- 
ative centre," as my heretical friend has elsewhere 
called man. 

— Thought, conscience, -will, to make them all thy own 
He rent a pillar from the eternal throne ! 

— Made in His image, thou must nobly dare 
The thorny crown of sovereignty to share. 

— Think not too meanly of thy low estate ; 
Thou hast a choice ; to choose is to create ! 

If he will look a little closely, he will see that the 
profile and the full-face views of the will are both 
true and perfectly consistent. 

Now let us come back, after this long digres- 
sion, to the conversation with the intelligent Eng- 
lishman. We begin skirmishing with a few light 
ideas, — testing for thoughts, — as our electro-chem- 
ical friend, De Sauty, if there were such a person, 
would test for his current; trying a little litmus- 
paper for acids, and then a slip of turmeric-paper 
for alkalies, as chemists do with unknown com- 
pounds ; flinging the lead, and looking at the 
shells and sands it brings up to find out whether 
we are like to keep in shallow water, or shall 
have to drop the deep-sea line ; — in short, see- 
ing what we have to deal with. If the Eng- 



44 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

li-shman gets his Hs pretty well placed, he comes 
from one of the higher gi'ades of the British so- 
cial order, and we shall find hun a good com- 
panion. 

But, after all, here is a great fact between us. 
We belong to two different civilizations, and, un- 
til we recognize what separates us, we are talking 
like Pyramus and Thisbe, without any hole in the 
wall to talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if 
he were a superior fellow, incapable of mistaking 
it for personal conceit, I think I would let out the 
fact of the real American feeling about Old- World 
folks. They are children to us in certain points of 
view. They are playing with toys we have done 
with for whole generations. That silly little drum 
they are always beating on, and the trumpet and 
the feather they make so much noise and cut such 
a figure with, we have not quite outgrown, but 
play with much less seriously and constantly than 
they do. Then there is a whole museum of wigs, 
and masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and 
grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at honest- 
ly, without affectation, that are still used in the 
Old- World puppet-shows. I don't think we on 
our part ever understand the Englishman's con- 
centrated ■ loyalty and specialized reverence. But 
then we do think more of a man, as such, (barring 
some little difficulties about race and complexion 
which the Englishman will touch us on presently,) 



THE PROFESSOR AT THJ) BREAKFAST-TABLE. 45 

than any people that ever lived did think of him. 
Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it is less 
intense. We have caste among us, to some ex- 
tent, it is true ; but there is never a collar on the 
American wolf-dog such as you often see on the 
English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust, hearty 
individuality. 

This confronting of two civilizations is always a 
grand sensation to me ; it is like cutting through 
the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim into 
each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult 
to let out the whole American nature without its 
self-assertion seeming to take a personal character. 
But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as 
w^ien he talks of church and kins: like Manco 
Capac among the Peruvians. Then you get the 
real British flavor, which the cosmopolite English- 
man loses. 

How much better this thorough interpenetration 
of ideas than a barren interchange of courtesies, 
or a bush-fighting argument, in which each man 
tries to cover as much of himself and expose as 
much of his opponent as the tangled thicket of 
the disputed ground will let him ! 

My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at 

least three deep. I follow a slow person's talk, 
and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my 
own beneath it. Under both runs obscurely a 
consciousness belonging to a third train of re- 



"46 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

^ flections, independent of the two others. I will 
jtry to write out a mental movement in three 
1 parts. 

A. — First voice, or Mental Soprano, — thought 
follows a woman talking. 

B. — Second voice, or Mental Barytone, — my 
running accompaniment. 

C. — Third voice, or Mental Basso, — low grum- 
ble of an importunate self-repeating idea. 

A. — White lace, three skirts, looped with flow- 
ers, wreath of apple-blossoms, gold bracelets, dia- 
mond pin and ear-rings, the most delicious berthe 
you ever saw, white satin slippers 

B. — Deuse take her I What a fool she is! 
Hear her chatter! (Look out of window just 
here. — Two pages and a half of description, if it 
were all written out, in one tenth of a second.) 

— Go ahead, old lady ! (Eye catches picture over 
fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came 
over in the "Mayflower" on the first old fool's 
face. Why don't they wear a ring in it? 

C. — You'll be late at lecture, — late at lecture, 

— late, — late, — late 

I observe that a deep layer of thought some- 
times makes itself felt through the superincumbent 
strata, thus: — The usual single or double currents 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 47 

shall flow an, but there shall be an influence 
blending with them, disturbing them in an ob- 
scure way, until all at once I say, — Oh, there I I 
knew there was something troubling me, — and the 
thought which had been working through comes 
up to the surface clear, definite, and articulates 
itself, — a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or an un- 
pleasant recollection. 

The inner world of thought and the outer world 
of events are alike in this, that they are both 
brimful. There is no space between consecutive 
thoughts, or between the never-ending series of 
actions. All pack tight, and mould their surfaces 
against each other, so that in the long run there 
is a' wonderful average uniformity in the forms of 
both thoughts and actions, — just as you find that 
cylinders crowded all become hexagonal prisms, 
and spheres pressed together are formed into regu- 
lar polyhedra. 

Every event that a man would master must be 
mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the 
reins of a thought except as it galloped by him. 
So, to carry out, with another comparison, my 
remark about the layers of thought, we may con- 
sider the mind, as it moves among thoughts or 
events, like a circus-rider whirling round with a 
great troop of horses. He can mount a fact or 
an idea, and guide it more or less completely, 
but he cannot stop it. So, as I said in another 



48 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. '^^Ml 

way at the beginning, he can stride two or three 
thoughts at once, bat not break their steady walk, 
trot, or gallop. He can only take his foot from 
the saddle of one thought and put it on that of 
another. 

What is the saddle of a thought ? Why, 

a word, of course. — Twenty years after j^-ou have 
dismissed a thought, it suddenly wedges up to 
you through the press, as if it had been steadily 
galloping round and round all that time without 
a rider. 

The will does not act in the interspaces of 
thought, for there are no such interspaces, but sim- 
ply steps from the back of one moving thought 
upon that of another. 

1 should like to ask, — said the divinity- 
student, — since we are getting into metaphysics, 
how you can admit space, if all things are in 
contact, and how you can admit time, if it is 
always noio to something? 

— I thought it best not to hear this question. 

1 wonder if you know this class of phi- 
losophers in books or elsewhere. One of them 
makes his bow to the public, and exhibits an un- 
fortunate truth bandaged up so that it cannot stir 
hand or foot, — as helpless, apparently, and unable 
to take care of itself, as an Egyptian mummy. 
He then proceeds, with the air and method of a 
master, to take off the bandages. Nothing can 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 49 

be neater than the way in which he does it. But 
as he takes off layer after layer, the ti'uth seems 
to grow smaller and smaller, and some of its out- 
lines begin to look like something we have seen 
before. At last, when he has got them all off, 
and the truth struts out naked, we recognize it as 
a diminutive and familiar acquaintance whom we 
have known in the streets all our lives. The fact 
is, the philosopher has coaxed the truth into his 
study and put all those bandages on ; of course it 
is not very hard for him to take thern off. Still, 
a great many people like to watch the process, — 
he does it so neatly! 

Dear! dear! I am ashamed to write and talk, 
sometimes, when I see how those functions of 
the large-brained, thumb-opposing plantigrade are 
abused by my fellow-vertebrates, — perhaps by my- 
self. How they spar for wind, instead of hitting 
from the shoulder ! 

The young fellow called John arose and 

placed himself in a neat fighting attitude. — Fetch 
on the fellah that makes them long words I — he 
said, — and planted a straight hit with the right 
fist in the concave palm of the left hand with a 
click like a cup and ball. — You small boy there, 
hurry up that " Webster's Unabridged ! " 

The little gentleman with the malformation, be- 
fore described, shocked the propriety of the break- 
fast-table by a loud utterance of three words, of 



50 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

which the two last were " Webster's Unabridged," 
and the first was an emphatic monosyllable. — Beg 
pardon, — he added, — forgot myself. But let us 
have an English dictionary, if we are to have any. 
I don't beKeve in clipping the coin of the realm, 
Sir! If I put a weathercock on my house, Sir, I 
want it to tell which way the wind blows up aloft, 
— off from the prairies to the ocean, or off from 
the ocean to the prairies, or any way it wants to 
blow! I don't want a weathercock with a winch 
in an old gentleman's study that he can take hold 
of and turn, so that the vane shall point west 
when the great wind overhead is blowing east 
with all its might. Sir! Wait till we give you a 
dictionary. Sir ! It takes Boston to do that thing. 
Sir! 

Some folks think water can't run down-hill 

anywhere out of Boston, — remarked the Koh-i- 
noor. 

I don't know what some folks think so well as I 
know what some fools say^ — rejoined the Little Gen- 
tleman. — If importing most dry goods made the 
best scholars, I dare say you would know where to 
look for 'em. — Mr. Webster couldn't spell. Sir, or 
wouldn't spell. Sir, — at any rate, he didn't spell; 
and the end of it was a fisjht between the owners 
of some copyrights and the dignity of this noble 
language which we have inherited from our Eng- 
lish fathers. Language ! — the blood of the soul, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 51 

Sir! into which our thoughts run and out of which 
they grow ! We know what a word is worth here 
in Boston. Young Sam Adams got up on the 
stage at Commencement, out at Cambridge there, 
with his gown on, the Governor and Council look- 
ing on in the name of his Majesty, King George 
the Second, and the girls looking down out of the 
galleries, and taught people how to spell a word 
that wasn't in the Colonial dictionaries ! R-e, re, 
s-i-s, sis, t-a-n-c-e, tance, Resistance ! That was in 
'43, and it was a good many years before the Bos- 
ton boys began spelling it with . their muskets ; — 
but when they did begin, they spelt it so loud that 
the old bedridden women in the English almhouses 
heard every syllable ! Yes, yes, yes, — it was a 
good while before those other two Boston boys got 
the class so far along that it could spell those two 
hard words. Independence and Union! I tell you 
what. Sir, there are a thousand lives, aye, some- 
times a milHon, go to get a new word into a lan- 
guage that is worth speaking. We know what 
language means too well here in Boston to play 
tricks with it. We never make a new word till 
we have made a new thing or a new thought, Sir! 
When we shaped the new mould of this continent, 
we had to make a few. When, by God's permis- 
sion, we abrogated the primal curse of maternity, 
we had to make a word or two. The cutwater 
of this great Leviathan clipper, the Occidental, 



52 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— this thirty-masted wind-and-steam wave-crusher, 

— must throw a little spray over the human vo- 
cabulary as it splits the waters of a new world's 
destiny I 

He rose as he spoke, until his stature seemed 
to swell into the fair human proportions. His 
feet must have been on the upper round of his 
high chair; — that was the only way I could ac- 
count for it. 

Puts her through fust-rate, — said the young fel- 
low whom the boarders call John. 

The venerable and kind-looking old gentleman 
who sits opposite said he remembered Sam Adams 
as Governor. An old man in a brown coat. Saw 
him take the Chair on Boston Common. Was a 
boy then, and remembers sitting on the fence in 
front of the old Hancock house. Recollects he 
had a glazed 'lection-bun, and sat eating it and 
looking down on to the Common. Lalocks flow- 
ered late that year, and he got a great bunch off 
from the bushes in the Hancock front-yard. 

Them 'lection buns are no go, — said the young 
man John, so called. — I know the trick. Give 
a fellah a fo'penny bun in the mornin', an' he 
downs the whole of it. In about an hour it 
swells up in his stomach as big as a football, and 
Ms feelin's sp'ilt for that day. That's the way to 
stop off a young one from eatin' up all the 'lection 
dinner. 






THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 53 

Salem! Salem I not Boston, — shouted the little 
man. 

But the Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping 
laugh, and the boy Benjamin Franklin looked 
sharp at his mother, as if he remembered the bun- 
experiment as a part of his past personal his- 
tory. 

The little gentleman was holding a fork in his 
left hand. He stabbed a boulder of home-made 
bread with it, mechanically, and looked at it as if 
it ought to shriek. It did not, — but he sat as if 
watching it. 

Language is a solemn thing, — I said. — It 

grows out of life, — out of its agonies and ecsta- 
sies, its wants and its weariness.- Every language 
is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak 
it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines 
and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall 
a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me 
tell you what comes of meddling with things that 
can take care of themselves. — A friend of mine 
had a watch given him, when he was a boy, — a 
" bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came 
off like an oyster-shell from its contents ; you 
know them, — the cases that you hang on your 
thumb, while the core^ or the real watch, lies in 
your hand as naked as a peeled apple. Well, he 
began with taking off the case, and so on from 
one liberty to another, until he got it fairly open, 



54 THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and there were the works, as good as if they were 
alive, — crown-wheel, balance-wheel, and all the rest. 
All right except one thing, — there was a con- 
founded little hair had got tangled round the bal- 
ance-wheel. So my young Solomon got a pair 
of tweezers, and caught hold of the hair very 
nicely, and pulled it right out, without touching 
any of the wheels, — when, — buzzzZZZ! and the 
watch had done up twenty-four hours in double 
magnetic-telegraph time ! — The English language 
was wound up to run some thousands of years, 
I trust ; but if everybody is to be pulling at every- 
thing he thinks is a hair^ our grandchildren will 
have to make the discovery that it is a hair-5/?nwg*, 
and the old Anglo-Norman soul's-timekeeper will 
run down, as so many other dialects have done 
before it. I can't stand this meddling any better 
than you, Sh\ But we have a great deal to be 
proud of in the lifelong labors of thaf old lexi- 
cographer, and we mustn't be ungrateful. Besides, 
don't let us deceive ourselves, — the war of the 
dictionaries is only a disguised rivalry of cities, 
colleges, and especially of publishers. After all, 
it is likely that the language will shape itself by 
larger forces than phonography and dictionary -mak- 
ing. You may spade up the ocean as much as 
you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you can, — 
but the moon will still lead the tides, and the 
winds will form their surface. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 55 

• Do you know Richardson's Dictionary ? — 

I said to my neighbor the divinity-student. 

Haow ? — said the divinity-student. — He colored, 
as he noticed on my face a tw^itch in one of the 
muscles which tuck up the corner of the mouth, 
(zygomaticus major,) and which I coiild not hold 
back from making a little movement on its own 
account. 

It was too late. — A country-boy, lassoed when 
he was a half-grown colt. Just as good as a 
city-boy, and in some ways, perhaps, better, — but 
caught a little too old not to carry some marks 
of' his earlier ways of life. Foreigners, who have 
talked a strange tongue half their lives, return to 
the language of their childhood in their dying 
hours. Gentlemen in fine linen, and scholars in 
large libraries, taken by surprise, or in a careless 
moment, will sometimes let slip a word they knew 
.as boys in homespun and have not spoken since 
that time, — but it lay there under all their culture. 
That is one way you may know the country-boys 
after they have grown rich or celebrated ; another 
is by the odd old family names, particularly those 
of the Hebrew prophets, which the good old peo- 
ple have saddled them with. 

Boston has enough of England about it to 

make a good English dictionary, — said that fresh- 
looking youth whom I have mentioned as sitting 
at the right upper corner of the table. 



56 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I turned and looked him full in the face, — for 
the pure, manly intonations arrested me. The 
voice was youthful, but full of character. — I sup- 
pose some persons have a peculiar susceptibility in 
the matter of voice. — Hear this. 

Not long after the American Revolution, a 
young lady was sitting in her father's chaise in a 
street of this town of Boston. She overheard a 
little girl talking or singing, and was mightily 
taken with the tones of her voice. Nothing would 
satisfy her but she must have that little girl come 
and live in her father's house. So the child came, 
being then nine years old. Until her marriage 
she remained under the same roof with the young 
lady. Her children became successively inmates 
of the lady's dwelling ; and now, seventy years, or 
thereabouts, since the young lady heard the child 
singing, one of that child's children and one of 
her grandchildren are with her in that home, where 
she, no longer young, except in heart, passes her 
peaceful days. — Three generations linked together 
by so light a breath of accident ! 

I liked the sound of this youth's voice, I said, 
and his look when I came to observe him a little 
more closely. His complexion had something bet- 
ter than the bloom and freshness which had first 
attracted me ; — it had that diffused tone which is 
a sure index of wholesome lusty life. A fine lib- 
eral style of nature it seemed to be: hair crisped, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 57 

moustache springing thick and dark, head firmly 
planted, lips finished, as one commonly sees them 
in gentlemen's families, a pupil well contracted, 
and a mouth that opened frankly with a white 
flash of teeth that looked as if they could serve 
him as they say Ethan Allen's used to serve their 
owner, — to draw nails with. This is the kind of 
fellow to walk a frigate's deck and bowl his 
broadsides into the " Gadlant Thudnder-bomb," or 
any forty-portholed adventurer who would like to 
exchange a few tons of iron compliments. — I 
don't know what put this into my head, for it 
was not till some time afterward I learned the 
young fellow had been in the naval school at 
Annapolis. Something had happened to change 
his plan of life, and he was now studying engi- 
neering and architecture in Boston, 

When the youth made the short remark which 
drew my attention to him, the little deformed 
gentleman* turned round and took a long look at 
him. 

Good for the Boston boy ! — he said. 

I am not a Boston boy, — said the youth, smil- 
ing, — I am a Marylander. 

I don't care where you come from, — we'll make 
a Boston man of you, — said the little gentleman. 
— Pray, what part of Maryland did you come 
from, and how shall I call you ? 

The poor youth had to speak pretty loud, as he 

3* 



58 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was at the right upper corner of the table, and 
the little gentleman next the lower left-hand cor- 
ner. His face flushed a little, but he answered 
pleasantly, — telling who he was, as if the little 
man's infirmity gave him a right to ask any ques- 
tions he wanted to. 

Here is the place for you to sit, — said the lit- 
tle gentleman, pointing to the vacant chair next 
his own, at the corner. 

You're go'n' to have a young lady next you, if 
you wait till to-morrow, — said the landlady to 
him. 

He did not reply, but I had a fancy that he 
changed color. It can't be that he has suscepti- 
bilities with reference to a contingent young lady! 
It can't be that he has had experiences which 
make him sensitive ! Nature could not be quite 
so cruel as to set a heart throbbing in that poor 
little cage of ribs ! There is no use in wasting 
notes of admiration. I must ask the landlady 
about him. 

These are some of the facts she furnished. — 
Has not been long with her. Brought a sight of 
furniture, — couldn't hardly get some of it up- 
stairs. Hasn't seemed particularly attentive to the 
ladies. The Bombazine (whom she calls Cousin 
something or other) has tried to enter into conver- 
sation with him, but retu'ed with the impression 
that he was indifferent to ladies' society. Paid his 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 59 

bill the other day without saying a word about 
it. Paid it in gold, — had a great heap of twen- 
ty-dollar pieces. Hires her best room. Thinks he 
is a very nice little man, but lives dreadful lonely 
up in his chamber. Wants the care of some ca- 
pable nuss. Never pitied anybody more in her 
life, — never see a more interestin' person. 

My intention was, when I began making 

these notes, to let them consist principally of con- 
versations between myself and . the other boarders. 
So they will, very probably; but my curiosity is 
excited about this little boarder of ours, and my 
reader must not be disappointed, if I sometimes in- 
terrupt a discussion to give an account of whatever 
fact or traits I may discover about him. It so hap- 
pens that his room is next to mine, and I have 
the opportunity of observing many of his ways 
without any active movements of curiosity. That 
his room contains heavy furniture, that he is a 
restless little body and is apt to be up late, that 
he talks to himself, and keeps mainly to himself, 
is nearly all I have yet found out. 

One curious circumstance happened lately, which 
I mention without drawing an absolute inference. 
— Being at the studio of a sculptor with whom 
1 am acquainted, the other day, I saw a remark- 
able cast of a left arm. On my asking where the 
model came from, he said it was taken direct from 
the arm of a deformed person^ who had employed 



60 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

one of the Italian moulders to make the cast. It 
was a curious case, it should seem, of one beau- 
tiful limb upon a frame otherwise singularly im- 
perfect. — I have repeatedly noticed this little 
gentleman's use of his left arm. Can he have 
furnished the model I saw at the sculptor's ? 

So we are to have a new boarder to-mor- 
row. I hope there will be something pretty and 
pleasing about her. A woman with a creamy 
voice, and finished in alto rilievo, would be a va- 
riety in the boarding-house, — a little more mar- 
row and a little less sinew than our landlady and 
her daughter and the bombazine-clad female, all 
of whom are of the turkey-drumstick style of or- 
ganization. I don't mean that these are our only 
female companions ; but the rest being conversa- 
tional non-combatants, mostly still, sad feeders, 
who take in their food as locomotives take in 
wood and water, and then wither away from the 
table like blossoms that never come to fruit, I 
have not yet referred to them as individuals. 

I wonder what kind of young person we shall 
see in that empty chair to-morrow! 

1 read this song to the boarders after break- 



fast the other morning. It was written for our 
fellows; — you know who they are, of course. 



THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 61 



THE BOYS. 

Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 
If there has, take him out, without making a noise ! 
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite 1 
Old Time is a liar ! We're twenty to-night ! 

We're twenty ! We're twenty ! Who says we are more ? 
He's tipsy, — young jackanapes ! — show him the door! — 
" Gray temples at twenty ? " — Yes ! white, if we please ; 
AVhere the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze I 

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake! 
Look close, — you will see not a sign of a flake ; 
We want some new garlands for those we have shed, — 
And these are white roses in place of the red ! 

We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told, 
Of talking (in public) as if we were old ; — 
That boy we call " Doctor," and this we call " Judge ; " — 
It's a neat little fiction, — of course it's all fudge. 

That fellow's the " Speaker," — the one on the right ; 
" Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night ? 
That's our " Member of Congress," we say when we chaff ; 
There's the "Reverend" What's his name? — don't make me 
laugh ! 

That boy with the grave mathematical look 
Made believe he had written a wonderful book. 
And the Royal Society thought it was true! 
So they chose him right in ; a good joke it was, too I 



62 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

There's a boy, — we pretend, — with a three-decker-brain, 

That could harness a team with a logical chain ; 

When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, 

We called him " The Justice," — but now he's " The Squire." 

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith, — 
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith, — 
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, — 
— Just read on his medal, — "My country, — of thee!" 

You hear that boy laughing? — you think he's all fun, — 
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; 
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call. 
And the r»oor man that knows him laughs loudest of all ! 

Yes, we're boys, — always playing with tongue or with pen,— 
And I sometimes have asked, — Shall we ever be men ? 
Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay, 
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away ? 

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray I 
The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May ! 
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys. 
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys 1 



III 

[The Professor talks with the Reader. He tells a 
Young GirVs Story.] 

When the elements that went to the making of 
the first man, father of mankind, had been with- 



THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 63 

drawn from the world of unconscious matter, the 
balance of creation was disturbed. The materials 
that go to the making of one woman were set 
free by the abstraction from inanimate nature of 
one man's-worth of masculine constituents. These 
combined to make our first mother, by a logical 
necessity involved in the previous creation of our 
common father. All this, mythically, illustratively, 
and by no means doctrinally or polemically. 

The man implies the woman, you will under- 
stand. The excellent gentleman whom I had the 
pleasure of setting right in a trifling matter a few 
weeks ago believes in the frequent occurrence of 
miracles at the present day. So do I. I believe, 
if you could find an uninhabited coral-reef island, 
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with plenty 
of cocoa-palms and bread-fruit on it, and put a 
handsome young fellow, like our Marylander, ashore 
upon it, if you touched there a year afterwards, 
you would find him walking under the palm-trees 
arm in arm with a pretty woman. 

Where would she come from? 

Oh, that's the miracle ! 

1 was just as certain, when I saw that fine, 

high-colored youth at the upper right-hand corner 
of our table, that there would appear some fitting 
feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a 
clairvoyant, seeing it all beforehand. 

1 have a fancy that those Marylanders are 



64 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

just about near enough to the sun to ripen well. — 
How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry, 
Baltimoreans, both ! Joe, with his cheeks like 
lady-apples, and his eyes like black-heart cherries, 
and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh of 
cocoa-nuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier- 
drops rattling overhead, as we sat at our sparkling 
. banquets in those gay times ! Harry, champion, 
by acclamation, of the College heavy-weights, 
^road-shouldered, bull- necked, square-jawed, six feet 
and trimmings, a little science, lots of pluck, good- 
natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red- 
eyed bison ■ in the crack of handrto-hand battlel) 
Who forgets the great muster-day, and the colli- 
sion of the classic with the democratic forces? 
The huge butcher, fifteen stone, — two hundred 
and ten pounds, — -good weight, — steps out like 
Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry, 
the Baltimorean, — one of the quiet sort, who 
strike first, and do the talking, if there is any, af- 
terwards. No words, but, in the place thereof, a 
clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a 
spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knock- 
ing the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank, — fol- 
lowed, alas ! by the too impetuous youth, so that 
both rolled down together, and the conflict termi- 
nated in one of those inglorious and inevitable 
Yankee clinches^ followed by a general melee, which 
make our native fistic encounters so different fi:om 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 65 

such admirably-ordered contests as that ^^/■hich I 
once saw at an English fair, where everything was ' 
done decently and in order, and the fight began 
and ended with such grave- propriety, that a sport- 
ing parson need hardly have hesitated to open it • 
with a devout petition, and, after it was over, dis- 
miss the ring with a benediction. 

I can't help telling one more story about this 
great field-day, though it is the most wanton and 

irrelevant disrression. But all of us have a little V^,^ 

, in 
speck of fight underneath our peace and good-willy. ( 

to men, — just a speck, for revolutions and great 
emergencies, you know, — so that we should not 
submit to be trodden quite flat by the first heavy- 
heeled aggressor that came along. You can tell 
a portrait from an ideal head, I suppose, and a 
true story from one spun out of the writer's inven- 
tion. See whether this sounds true or not. 

Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin sent out two fine 
blood-horses. Barefoot and Serab by name, to 
Massachusetts, something before the time I am 
talking of. With them came a Yorkshire groom, 
a stocky little fellow, in velvet breeches, who made 
that mysterious hissing noise, traditionary in Eng- 
lish stables, when he rubbed down the silken- 
skinned racers, in great perfection. After the sol- 
diers had come from the muster-field, and some 
of the companies were on the village-common, 
there was still some skirmishing between a few 



66 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

individuals who had not had the fight taken out 
of them. The little Yorkshire groom thought he 
must serve out somebody. So he threw him- 
self into an approved scientific attitude, and, in 
brief, emphatic language, expressed his urgent 
anxiety to accommodate any classical young gen- 
tleman who chose to consider himself a candidate 
for his attentions. I don't suppose there were 
many of the college boys that would have been a 
match for him in the art which Englishmen know 
so much more of than Americans, for the most 
part. However, one of the Sophomores, a very 
quiet, peaceable fellow, just stepped out of the 
crowd, and, running straight at the groom, as he 
stood there, sparring away, struck him with the 
sole of his foot, a straight blow, as if it had been 
with his fist, — and knocked him heels over head 
and senseless, so that he had to be carried off 
from the field. This ugly way of hitting is the 
great trick of the French savate, which is not 
commonly thought able to stand its ground against 
English pugilistic science. — These are old recollec- 
tions, with not much to recommend them, except, 
perhaps, a dash of life, which may be worth a lit- 
tle something. 

The young Marylander brought them all up, 
you may remember. He recalled to my mind 
those two splendid pieces of vitality I told you 
of. Both have been long dead. How often we 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 67 

see these great red flaring flambeaux of life 7 
blown out, as it were, by a puff" of wind, — i 
and the little, single-wicked night-lamp of being, { 
which some white-faced and attenuated invalid S 
shades with trembling fingers, flickering on while 
they go out one after another, until its glimmer is 
all that is left to us of the generation it belonged to I 

I told you that I was perfectly sure, beforeh-and, 
we should find some pleasing girlish or womanly 
shape to fill the blank at our table and match the 
dark-haired youth at the upper corner. 

There she sits, at the very opposite corner, just 
as far off" as accident could put her from this 
handsome fellow, by whose side she ought, of 
course, to be sitting. One of the " positive " 
blondes, as my friend, you may remember, used 
to call them. Tawny-haired, amber-eyed, full- 
throated, skin as white as a blanched almond. 
Looks dreamy to me, not self-conscious, though a 
black ribbon round her neck sets it off" as a Ma- 
rie-Antoinette's diamond-necklace could not do. 
So in her dress, there is a harmony of tints that 
looks as if an artist had run his eye over her and 
given a hint or two like the finishing touch to a 
picture. I can't help being struck with her, for 
she is at once rounded and fine in feature, looks 
calm, as blondes are apt to, and as if she might 
run wild, if she were trifled with. — It is just as I 
knew it would be, — and anybody can see that our 



68 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

young Marylander will be dead in love with her 
in a week. 

Then if that little man w^ould only turn out 
immensely rich and have the good -nature to die 
and leave them all his money, it would be as 
nice as a three-volume novel. 

The Little Gentleman is in a flurry, I suspect, 
with the excitement of having such a charming 
neighbor next him. I judge so mainly by his silence 
and by a certain rapt and serious look on his face, 
as if he were thinking of something that had hap- 
pened, or that might happen, or that ought to 
happen, — or how beautiful her young life looked, 
or how hardly Nature had dealt with him, or 
something which struck him silent, at any rate. I 
made several conversational openings for him, but 
he did not fire irp as he often does. I even went 
so far as to indulge in a fling at the State House, 
which, as we all know, is in truth a very impos- 
ing structure, covering less ground than St. Peter's, 
but of similar general eflect. The little man 
looked up, but did not reply to my taunt. He 
said to the young . lady, how^ever, that the State 
House was the Parthenon of our Acropolis, which 
seemed to please her, for she smiled, and he red- 
dened a little, — so I thought. I don't think it 
right to watch persons who are the subjects of 
special infirmity, — but we all do it. 

I see that they have crowded the chairs a little 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 6? 

at that end of the table, to make room for an- 
other new-comer of the lady sort. A well-mounted, 
middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without 

a cap, — pretty wide in the parting, though, 

contours vaguely hinted, — features very quiet, 

says little as yet, but seems to keep her eye on 
the young lady, as if having some responsibility 
for her. 

My record is a blank for some days after this. 
In the mean time I have contrived to make out 
the person and the story of our young lady, who, 
according to appearances, ought to furnish us a 
heroine for a boarding-house romance before a 
year is out. It is very curious that she should 
prove connected with a person many of us have 
heard of. Yet, curious as it is, I have been a 
hundred times struck with the circumstance that 
the most remote facts are constantly striking each 
other ; just as vessels starting from ports thousands 
of miles apart pass close to each other in the 
naked breadth of the ocean, nay, sometimes even 
touch, in the dark, with a crack of timbers, a 
gurgling of water, a cry of startled sleepers, — a 
cry mysteriously echoed in warning dreams, as the 
wife of some Gloucester fisherman, some coastino' 
skipper, wakes with a shriek, calls the name of 
her husband, and sinks back to uneasy slumbers 
upon her lonely pillow, — a widow. 



70 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Oh, these mysterious meetings! Leaving all the 
vague, waste, endless spaces of the washing des- 
ert, the ocean-steamer and the fishing-smack sail 
straight towards each other as if they ran in 
grooves ploughed for them in the waters from the 
beginning of creation! Not only things and events, 
but our own thoughts, are so full of these surprises, 
that, if there were a reader in my parish who did 
not recognize the familiar occurrence of what I am 
now going to mention, I should think it a case for 
the missionaries of the Society for the Propagation 
of Intelligence among the Comfortable Classes. 

There are about as many twins in the births of 
thought as of children. For the first time in your 
lives you learn some fact or come across some 
idea. Within an hour, a day, a week, that same 
fact or idea strikes you from another quarter. It 
seems as if it had passed into space and bounded 
back upon you as an echo from the blank wall 
that shuts in the world of thought. Yet no pos- 
sible connection exists between the two channels 
by which the thought or the fact arrived. Let me 
give an infinitesimal illustration. 

One of the Boys mentioned, the other evenings 
in the course of a very pleasant poem he read us, 
a little trick of the Commons table-boarders, which 
I, nourished at the parental board, had never heard 
of. Young fellows being always hungry Al- 
low me to stop dead-short, in order to utter an 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 71 

aphorism which has been forming itself in one of 
the . blank interior spaces of my intelligence, like a 
crystal in the cavity of a geode. 

Aphorism by the Professor. 

In order to know whethier a human being is 
young or old, offer it food of different kinds at 
short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at 
any hour of the day or night. If old, it observes 
stated periods, and you might as weU attempt to 
regulate the time of high-water to suit a fishing- 
party as to change these periods. 

The crucial experiment is this. Offer a bulky 
and boggy bun to the suspected individual just 
ten minutes before dinner. If this is eagerly ac- 
cepted and devoured, the fact of youth is estab- 
lished. If the subject of the question starts back 
and expresses surprise and incredulity, as if you 
could not possibly be in earnest, the fact of matu- 
rity is no less clear. 

Excuse me, — I return to my story of the 

Commons-table. — Young fellows being always 
hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre 
fare of the evening meal, it was a trick of some 
of the Boys to impale a slice of meat upon a fork, 
at dinner-time, and stick the fork holding it be- 
neath the table, so that they could get it at tea- 
time. The dragons that guarded this table of the 



72 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Hesperides found out the trick at last, and kept 
a sharp look-out for missing forks; — they knew 
where to find one, if it was not in its place. — 
Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting so 
many years to hear of this college trick, I should 
hear- it mentioned a second time within the same 
twenty-four hours by a college youth of the pres- 
ent generation. Strange, but true. And so it has 
happened to me and to every person, often and 
often, to be hit in rapid succession by these twin- 
ned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked like 
chain-shot. 

I was going to leave the simple reader to won- 
der over this, taking it as an unexplained marvel. 
I think, however, I will turn over a furrow of sub- 
soil in it. — The explanation is, of course, that in 
a great many thoughts there must be a few coin- 
cidences, and these instantly arrest our attention. 
Now we shall probably never have the least idea 
of the enormous number of impressions which 
pass through our consciousness, until in some fu- 
ture life we see the photographic record of our 
thoughts and the stereoscopic picture of our ac- 
tions. There go more pieces to make up a con- 
scious life or a living body than you think for. 
Why, some of you were surprised when a friend 
of mine told you there were fifty-eight separate 
pieces in a fiddle. How many " swimming glands" 
— solid, organized, regularly formed, rounded disks, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 73 

taking an active part in all your vital processes, 
part and parcel, each one of them, of your corpo- 
real being — do you suppose are whirled along, 
like pebbles in a stream, with the blood which 
warms your frame and colors your cheeks ? — A 
noted German physiologist spread out a minute 
drop of blood, under the microscope, in narrow 
streaks, and counted the globules, and then made 
a calculation. The counting by the micrometer 
took him a iveek. — You have, my full-grown 
friend, of these little couriers in crimson or scarlet 
livery, running on your vital errands day and 
night as long as you live, sixty-five billions, five 
hundred and seventy thousand millions. Errors 
excepted. — Did I hear some gentleman say, 
" Doubted ? " — I am the Professor. I sit in my 
chair with a petard under it that will blow me 
through the sky-light of my lecture-room, if I do 
not know what I am talking about and whom I 
am quoting. 

Now, my dear friends, who are putting your 
hands to your foreheads, and saying to yourselves 
that you feel a little confused, as if you had been 
waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round 
you, is it possible that you do not clearly appre- 
hend the exact connection of all that I have been 
saying, and its bearing on what is now to come ? 
Listen, then. The number of these living ele- 
ments in our bodies illustrates the incalculable 



74 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

multitude of our thoughts; the number of our 
thoughts accounts for those frequent coincidences 
spoken of ; these coincidences in the world of 
thought illustrate those which we constantly ob- 
serve in the world of outward events, of which 
the presence of the young girl now at our table, 
and proving to be the daughter of an old ac- 
quaintance some of us may remember, is the 
special example which led me through this laby- 
rinth of reflections, and finally lands me at the 
commencement of this young girl's story, which, 
as I said, I have found the time and felt the in- 
terest to learn something of, and which I think I 
can teU without wronging the unconscious subject 
of my brief delineation. 

IRIS. 

You remember, perhaps, in some papers pub- 
lished awhile ago, an odd poem written by an old 
Latin tutor? He brought up at the verb amo, I 
love, as all of us do, and by and by Nature open- 
ed her great living dictionary for him at the word 
filia^ a daughter. The poor man was greatly per- 
plexed in choosing a name for her. Lucretia and 
Virginia were the first that he thought of; but 
then came up those pictured stories of Titus 
Livius, which he could never read without crying, 
though he had read them a hundred times. 

— Lucretia sending for her husband and her 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75 

father, each to bring one friend with him, and 
awaiting them in her chamber. To them lier 
wrongs briefly. Let them see to the wretch, — 
she will take care of herself. Then the hidden 
knife flashes out and sinks into her heart. She 
slides from her seat, and falls dying. " Her hus- 
band and her father cry aloud." — No, — not Lu- 
cretia. 

— Virginius, — a brown old soldier, father of 
a nice girl. She engaged to a very promising 
young man. Decemvir Appius takes a violent 
fancy to her, — must have her at any rate. Hires 
a lawyer to present the arguments in favor of the 
view that she was another man's daughter. There 
used to be lawyers in Rome that would do such 
things. — All right. There are two sides to every- 
thing. Audi alteram partem. The legal gentle- 
man has no opinion, — he only states the evi- 
dence. — A doubtful case. Let the young lady be 
under the protection of the Honorable Decemvir 
until it can be looked up thoroughly. — Father 
thinks it best,^- on the whole, to give in. Will ex- 
plain the matter, if the young lady and her maid 
will step this way. That is the explanation, — a 
stab with a butcher's knife, snatched from a stall, 
meant for other Iambs than this poor bleeding Vir- 
ginia ! 

The old man thought over the story. Then he 
must have one look at the original. So he took 



76 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

down the first volume and read it over. When 
he came to that part where it tells how the young 
gentleman she was engaged to and a friend of his 
took up the poor gnl's bloodless shape and carried 
it through the street, and how all the women fol- 
lowed, wailing, and asking if that was what their 
daughters were coming to, — if that was what they 
were to get for being good girls, — he melted down 
into his accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, 
through them all, of delight at the charming Latin 
of the narrative. But it was impossible to call 
his child Virginia. He could never look at her 
without thinking she had a knife sticking in her 
bosom. 

Dido would be a good name, and a fresh one. 
She was a queen, and the founder of a great city. 
Her story had been immortalized by the greatest 
of poets, — for the old Latin tutor clove to " Vir- 
gilius Maro," as he called him, as closely as ever 
Dante did in his memorable journey. So he took 
down his Virgil, — it was the smooth-leafed, open- 
lettered quarto of Baskerville, — and began read- 
ing the loves and mishaps of Dido. It wouldn't 
do. A lady who had not learned discretion by ex- 
perience, and came to an evil end. He shook his 
head, as he sadly repeated, 

" misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore ; " 

but when he came to the lines, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 77 

" Ergo Iris croceis per coelum rosclda pennis 
Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores," 

he jumped up with a great exclamation, which the 
particular recording angel who heard it pretended 
not to understand, or it might have gone hard 
with the Latin tutor some time or other. 

^^ Iris shall be her name!" — he said. So her 
name was Iris. 

The natural end of a tutor is to perish by 

starvation. It is only a question of time, just as 
with the burning of college libraries. These all 
burn up sooner or later, provided they are not 
housed in brick or stone and iron. I don't mean 
that you will see in the registry of deaths that 
this or that particular tutor died of well-marked, 
uncomplicated starvation. They may^ even, in ex- 
treme cases, be carried off by a thin, watery kind 
of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns, 
but means little to those who know that it is 
only debility settling on the head. Generally, how- 
ever, they fade and waste away under various pre- 
texts, — calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so 
on, to put a decent appearance upon the case and 
keep up the credit of the family and the institu- 
tion where they have passed through the succes- 
sive stages of inanition. 

In some cases it takes a great many years to 
kill a tutor by the process in question. You see, 
they do get food and clothes and fuel, in appre- 



78 THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ciable quantities, such as they are. You will even 
notice rows of books in their rooms, and a pic- 
ture or two, — things that look as if they had 
surplus money ; but these superfluities are the 
water of crystallization to scholars, and you can 
never get them away till the poor fellows effloresce 
into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor break- 
fasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with 
milk watered to the verge of transparency ; his 
mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment 
when it becomes tired out and tasteless ; his coal 
is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into 
ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate ; his 
flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too 
thick for summer. The greedy lungs of fifty 
hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from the air 
he breathes in his recitation-room. In short, he 
undergoes a process of gentle and gradual starva- 
tion. 

The mother of little Iris was not called 

Electra, like hers of the old story, neither was her 
grandfather Oceanus. Her blood-name, which she 
gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was 
a plain old English one, and her water-name was 
Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of Sam- 
uel, and admirable as reading equally well from 
the initial letter forwards and from the terminal 
letter backwards. The poor lady, seated with her 
companion at the chess-board of matrimony, had 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 79 

but just pushed forward her one little white pawn 
upon an empty square, when the Black Knight, 
that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, 
swooped down upon her and swept her from the 
larger board of life. 

The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at 
the head of his late companion, with her name 
and age and Eheu ! upon it, — a smaller one at 
her feet, with initials ; and left her by herself, 
to be rained and snowed on, — which is a hard 
thing to do for those whom we have cherished 
tenderly. 

About the time that the lichens, falling on the 
stone, like drops of water, had spread into fair, round 
rosettes, the tutor had starved into a slight cough. 
Then he began to draw the buckle of his black 
pantaloons a little tighter, and took in another 
reef in his never-ample waistcoat. His temples 
got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in 
his cheeks more vivid than of old. After a while 
his walks fatigued him, and he was tired, and 
breathed hard after going up a flight or two of 
stairs. Then came on other marks of inward trou- 
ble and general waste, which he spoke of to his 
physician as peculiar, and doubtless owing to ac- 
cidental causes ; to all which the doctor listened 
with deference, as if it had not been the old story 
that one in five or six of mankind in temperate 
climates tells, or has told for him, as if it were 



80 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

something new. As the doctor went out, he said 
to himself, — "On the rail at last. Accommoda- 
tion train. A good many stops, but will get to 
the station by and by." So the doctor wrote a 
recipe with the astrological sign of Jupiter before 
it, (just as your own physician does, inestimable 
reader, as you will see, if you look at his next 
prescription,) and departed, saying he would look 
in occasionally. After this, the Latin tutor began 
the usual course of "getting better," until he got 
so much better that his face was very sharp, and 
when he smiled, three crescent lines showed at 
each side of his lips, and when he spoke, it was 
in a muffled whisper, and the white of his eye 
glistened as pearly as the purest porcelain, — so 

much better, that he hoped — by spring — he 

might be able — to — attend to his class 

again. — But he was recommended not to expose 
himself, and so kept his chamber, and occasionally, 
not having anything to do, his bed. The unmar- 
ried sister with whom he lived took care of him ; 
and the child, now old enough to be manageable, 
and even useful in trifling offices, sat in the cham- 
ber, or played about. 

Things could not go on so forever, of course. 
One morning his face was sunken and his hands 
were very, very cold. He was "better," he whis- 
pered, but sadly and faintly. After a while he 
grew restless and seemed a little wandering. His 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 81 

mind ran on his classics, and fell back on the Latin 
grammar. 

"Iris!" he said, — ''filiola mea/"— The child 
knew this meant mt/ dear little daughter as weU 
as if it had been English. — " Rainbow ! " — for he 
would translate her name at times, — " come to 
me, — veni^^ — and his lips went on automatically, 
and murmured, " vel venito ! " — The child came 
and sat by his bedside and took his hand, which 
she could not warm, but which shot its rays of 
cold all through her slender frame. But there 
she sat, looking steadily at him. Presently he 
opened his lips feebly, and whispered, " Moribun- 
dus,^^ She did not know what that meant, but 
she saw that there was something new and sad. 
So she began to cry ; but presently remembering 
an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, 
got up and brought a Bible in the Latin version, 
called the Vulgate. " Open it," he said, — " I will 
read, — segnius irritant, — don't put the light out, 
— ah ! hcBret lateri, — I am going, — vale, vale, 
vale, good-bye, good-bye, — the Lord take care of 

my child ! — Domine, audi vel audita ! " His 

face whitened suddenly, and he lay still, with 
open eyes and mouth. He had taken his last 
degree. 

Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin 

life with a very brilliant rainbow over her, in a 
worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of 

4* 



82 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

man's attire, such as poor tutors wear, — a few 
good books, principally classics, — a print or two, 
and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with some 
pieces of furniture which had seen service, — these, 
and a child's heart full of tearful recollections and 
strange doubts and questions, alternating with the 
cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of child- 
ish grief; such were the treasures she inherited. — 
No, — I forgot. With that kindly sentiment which 
all of us feel for old men's first children, — frost- 
flowers of the early winter season, — the old tutor's 
students had remembered him at a time when he 
was laughing and crying with his new parental 
emotions, and running to the side of the plain 
crib in which his alter ego, as he used to say, 
was swinging, to hang over the little heap of stir- 
ring clothes, from which looked the minute, red, 
downy, still, round face, with unfijced eyes and 
working lips, — in that unearthly gravity which has 
never yet been broken by a smile, and which gives 
to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant's life 
the character of a first old age, to counterpoise 
that second childhood which there is one chance 
in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys 
had remembered the old man and young father 
at that tender period of his hard, dry life. There 
came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with 
classical figures, and bearing on a shield the graven 
words, Ex dono pupillorum. The handle on its 



I 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 83 

side showed what use the boys had meant it for, 
and a kind letter in it, written with the best of 
feeling, in the worst of Latin, pointed delicately 
to its destination. Out of this silver vessel, after 
a long, desperate, strangling cry, which marked 
her first great lesson in the realities of life, the 
child took the blue milk, such as poor tutors and 
their children get, tempered with water, and sweet- 
ened a little, so as to bring it nearer the standard 
established by the touching indulgence and par- 
tiality of Nature, — who has mingled an extra 
allowance of sugar in the blameless food of the 
child at its mother's breast, as compared with that 
of its infant brothers and sisters of the bovine 
race. 

But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with 
rain-water. An air-plant will grow by feeding on 
the winds. Nay, those huge forests that overspread 
great continents have built themselves up mainly 
from the air-currents with which they are always 
battling. The oak is but a foliated atmospheric 
crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds 
the future vegetable world in solution. The storm 
that tears its leaves has paid tribute to its strength, 
and it breasts the tornado clad in the spoils of a 
hundred hurricanes. 

Poor little Iris ! What had she in common 
with the great oak in the shadow of which we 
are losing sight of her ? — She lived and grew 



84 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

like that, — this was all. The blue milk ran into 
her veins and filled them with thin, pure blood. 
Her skin was fair, with a faint tinge, such as the 
white rosebud shows before it opens. The doctor 
who had attended her father was afraid her aunt 
would hardly be able to " raise " her, — " delicate 
child," — hoped she was not consumptive, — thought 
there was a fair chance she would take after her 
father. 

A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, 
with a white neckcloth, sent her a memoir of a 
child who died at the age of two years and eleven 
months, after having fully indorsed all the doc- 
trines of the particular persuasion to which he not 
only belonged himself, but thought it very shame- 
ful that everybody else did not belong. What 
with foreboding looks and dreary death-bed stories, 
it was a wonder the child made out to live through 
it. It saddened her early years, of course, — it 
distressed her tender soul with thoughts which, as 
they cannot be fully taken in, should be sparingly 
used as instruments of torture to break down the 
natural cheerfulness of a healthy child, or, what is 
infinitely worse, to cheat a dying one out of the 
kind illusions with which the Father of All has 
strewed its downward path. 

The child would have died, no doubt, and, if 
properly managed, might have added another to 
the long catalogue of wasting children who have 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 85 

been as cruelly played upon by spiritual physiolo- 
gists, often with the best intentions, as ever the 
subject of a rare disease by the curious students 
of science. 

Fortunately for her, however, a wise instinct 
had guided the late Latin tutor in the selection 
of the partner of his life, and the future mother 
of his child. The deceased tutoress was a tran- 
quil, smooth woman, easily nourished, as such 
people are, — a quality which is inestimable in a 
tutor's wife, — and so it happened that the daugh- 
ter inherited enough vitality from the mother to 
live through childhood and infancy and fight her 
way towards womanhood, in spite of the tenden- 
cies she derived from her other parent. 

Two and two do not always make four, 

in this matter of hereditary descent of qualities. 
Sometimes they make three, and sometimes five. 
It seems as if the parental traits at one time 
showed separate, at another blended, — that occa- 
sionally the force of two natures is represented in 
the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value 
than either original line of living movement, — that 
sometimes there is a loss of vitality hardly to be 
accounted for, and again a forward impulse of 
variable intensity in some new and unforeseen 
direction. 

So it was with this child. She had glanced off 
from her parental probabilities at an unexpected 



86 THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

angle. Instead of taking to classical learning like 
her father, or sliding quietly into household duties 
like her mother, she broke out early in efforts that 
pointed in the direction of Art. As soon as she 
could hold a pencil she began to sketch outlines 
of objects round her with a certain air and spirit. 
Very extraordinary horses, but their legs looked 
as if they could move. Birds unknown to Audu- 
bon, yet flying, as it were, with a rush. Men 
with impossible legs, which did yet seem to have 
a vital connection with their most improbable 
bodies. By-and-by the doctor, on his beast, — an 
old man with a face looking as if Time had 
kneaded it like dough with his knuckles, with a 
rhubarb tint and flavor pervading himself and his 
sorrel horse and all their appurtenances. A dread- 
ful old man! Be sure she did not forget those 
saddle-bags that held the detestable bottles out of ( 
which he used to shake those loathsome powders / 
which, to virgin childish palates that find heaven ; 

in strawberries and peaches, are Well, I x 

suppose 1 had better stop. Only she wished she 
was dead sometimes when she heard him coming. 
On the next leaf would figure the gentleman with 
the black coat and white cravat, as he looked when 
he came and entertained her with stories concern- 
ing the death of various little children about her 
age, to encourage her, as that wicked Mr. Arouet 
said about shooting Admiral Byng. Then she 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 87 

would take her pencil, and with a few scratches 
there would be the outline of a child, in which 
you might notice how one sudden sweep gave the 
chubby cheek, and two dots darted at the paper 
looked like real eyes. 

By-and-by she went to school, and caricatured 
the schoolmaster on the leaves of her grammars 
and geographies, and drew the faces of her com- 
panions, and, from time to time, heads and figures 
from her fancy, with large eyes, far apart, like 
those of RafFaelle's mothers and children, some- 
times with wild floating hair, and then with wings 
and heads thrown back in ecstacy. This was 
at about twelve years old, as the dates of these 
drawings show, and, therefore, three or four years 
before she came among us. Soon after this time, 
the ideal figures began to take the place of por- 
traits and caricatures, and a new feature appeared 
in her drawing-books in the form of fragments of 
verse and short poems. 

It was dull work, of course, for such a young 
girl to live with an old spinster and go to a vil- 
lage school. Her books bore testimony to this ; 
for there was a look of sadness in the faces she 
drew, and a sense of weariness and longing for 
some imaginary conditions of blessedness or other, 
which began to be painful. She might have gone 
through this flowering of the soul, and, casting 
her petals, subsided into a sober, human berry, 



88 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

but for the intervention of friendly assistance and 
counsel. 

In the town where she lived was a lady of hon- 
orable condition, somewhat past middle age, who 
was possessed of pretty ample means, of cultivated 
tastes, of excellent principles, of exemplary char- 
acter, and of more than common accomplishments. 
The gentleman in black broadcloth and white 
neckerchief only echoed the common voice about 
her, when he called her, after enjoying, beneath 
her hospitable roof, an excellent cup of tea, with 
certain elegancies and luxuries he was unaccus- 
tomed to, " The Model of all the Virtues." 

She deserved this title as well as almost any 
woman. She did really bristle with moral excel- 
lences. . Mention any good thing she had not 
done ; I should like to see you try ! There was 
no handle of weakness to take hold of her by ; 
she was as unseizable, except in her totality, as a 
billiard-ball; and on the broad, green, terrestrial 
table, where she had been knocked about, like all 
of us, by the cue of Fortune, she glanced from 
every human contact, and " caromed " from one 
relation to another, and rebounded from the stuffed 
cushion of temptation, with such exact and perfect 
angular movements, that the Enemy's corps of 
Reporters had long given up taking notes of her 
conduct, as there was no chance for their master. 

What an admirable person for the patroness and 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 89 

directress of a slightly self-willed child, with the 
lightning zigzag line of genius running like a glit- 
tering vein through the marble whiteness of her 
virgin nature! One of the lady-patroness's pecu- 
liar virtues was calmness. She was resolute and 
strenuous, but still. You could depend on her for 
every duty; she was as true as steel. She was 
kind-hearted and serviceable in all the relations of 
life. She had more sense, more knowledge, more 
conversation, as well as more goodness, than all 
the partners you have waltzed with this winter 
put together. 

Yet no man was known to have loved her, or 
even to have offered himself to her in marriage. 
It was a great wonder. I am very anxious to 
vindicate my character as a philosopher and an 
observer of Nature by accounting for this appar- 
ently extraordinary fact. 

You may remember certain persons who have] 
the misfortune of presenting to the friends whom j 
they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states 
of mind in which a contact of this kind has a 
depressing effect on the vital powers that makes 
us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the 
proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. 
When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and ) 
we feel as if our electricity had been drained by^ 
a powerful negative battery, carried about by an/ 
overgrown human torpedo. 



90 THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

" The Model of all the Virtues " had a pair of 
searching eyes as clear as Wenham ice ; but they 
were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her 
features disordered themselves slightly at times in 
a surface-smile, but never broke loose from their 
corners and indulged in the riotous tumult of a 
laugh, — which, I take it, is the mob-law of the 
features, — and propriety the magistrate who reads 
the riot-act. She carried the brimming cup of her 
inestimable virtues with a cautious, steady hand, 
and an eye always on them, to see that they did 
not spill. Then she was an admirable judge of 
character. Her mind was a perfect laboratory of 
tests and reagents ; every syllable you put into 
breath went into her intellectual eudiometer, and 
all your thoughts were recorded on litmus-paper. 
I think there has rarely been a more admirable 
woman. Of course, Miss Iris was immensely and 

passionately attached to her. Well, — these are 

two highly oxygenated adverbs, — grateful, — sup- 
pose we say, — yes, — grateful, dutiful, obedient to 
her wishes for the most part, — perhaps not quite 
up to the concert pitch of such a perfect orchestra 
of the virtues. 

We must have a weak spot or two in a char- 
acter before we can love it much. People that do 
not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than 
is good for them, or use anything but dictionary- 
words, are admirable subjects for biographies. But 



I 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 91 

we don't always care most for those flat-pattern 
flowers that press best in the herbarium. 

This immaculate woman, — why couldn't she 
have a fault or two ? Isn't there any old whisper 
which will tarnish that wearisome aureole of saintly 
perfection ? Doesn't she carry a lump of opium 
in her pocket ? Isn't her cologne-bottle replenished 
oftener than its legitimate use would require? It 
would be such a comfort! 

Not for the world would a young creature like 
Ms have let such words escape her, or such thoughts 
pass through her mind. Whether at the bottom 
of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an 
oppressive presence, it is hard to say, until we 
know more about her. Iris sits between the little 
gentleman and the "Model of all the Virtues," 
as the black-coated personage called her. — I will 
watch them all. 

Here I stop for the present. What the 

Professor said has had to make way this time for 
what he saw and heard. 

And now you may read these lines, which 

were written for gentle souls who love music, and 
read in even tones, and, perhaps, with something 
like a smile upon the reader's lips, at a meeting 
where these musical friends had gathered. Whether 
they were written with smiles or not, you can 
guess better after you have read them. 



92 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



THE OPENING OF THE PIANO. 

Is the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen 
With the gambrel-roof, and the gable looking Avestward to the 

green, 
At the side toward the sunset, with the window on its right, 
Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night. 

Ah me ! how I remember the evening Avhen it came ! 

What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame, 

When the wondrous box was opened that had come from over 

seas. 
With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys ! 

Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy. 
For. the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the 

boy» 
Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way. 
But the mother hushed the tumult with the words, "Now, 

Mary, play." 

For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign 

balm; 
She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow 

calm. 
In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling 

quills. 
Or carolling to her spinet with its thin metallic thrills. 

So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please, 
Sat down to the new " dementi," and struck the ghttering 
keys. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93 

Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim, 
As, floating from lip and finger, arose the " Vesper Hymn." 

— Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red, 
(Wedded since, and a widow, — something like ten years 

dead,) 
Hearing a gush of music such as none before. 
Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open 

door. 

Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies, 

—"Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries, 

(For she thought 'twas a singing creature caged in a box she 

heard,) 
" Open it ! open it, lady ! and let me see tlie bird ! " 



IV. 

I don't know whether our literary or professional 
people are more amiable than they are in other 
places, but certainly quarrelling is out of fashion 
among /them. This could niever be, if they were 
in the habit of secret anonymous puffing of each 
other. That is the kind of underground machin- 
ery, which manufactures false reputations and gen- 
uine hatreds. On the other hand, I should like to 
know if we are not at liberty to have a good 
time together, and say the pleasantest things we 



94 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

can think of to each other, when any of us reaches 
his thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth or eightieth birth- 
day. 

We don't have "scenes," I warrant you, on 
these occasions. No "surprise" parties I You un- 
derstand these, of course. In the rural districts, 
where scenic tragedy and melodrama cannot be 
had, as in the city, at the expense of a quarter 
and a white pocket-handkerchief, emotional excite- 
ment has to be sought in the dramas of real life. 
Christenings, weddings, and funerals, especially the 
latter, are the main dependence ; but babies, brides, 
and deceased citizens cannot be had at a day's 
notice. Now, then, for a surprise-party! 

A bag of flour, a barrel of potatoes, some strings 
of onions, a basket of apples, a big cake and many 
little cakes, a jug of lemonade, a purse stuffed 
with bills of the more modest denominations, may, 
perhaps, do well enough for the properties in one 
of these private theatrical exhibitions. The minis- 
ter- of the parish, a tender-hearted, quiet, hard- 
working man, living on a small salary, with many 
children, sometimes pinched to feed and clothe 
") them, praying fervently every day to be blest in 
his "basket and store," but sometimes fearing he 
asks amiss, to judge by the small returns, has the 
first role^ — not, however, by his own choice, but 
forced upon him. The minister's wife, a sharp- 
eyed, unsentimental body, is first lady ; the remain- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 95 

ing parts by the rest of the family. If they only 
had a playbill, it would run thus: — 

ON TUESDAY NEXT 
WILL BE PRESENTED 

THE AFFECTING SCENE 

CALLED 

THE SURPRISE-PARTY, 

OR 

THE OVERCOME FAMILY; 

WITH THE FOLLOWING STRONG CAST OF CHARACTERS : 

The Rev, Mr, Overcome^ by the Clergyman of 

this Parish. 
Mrs, Overcome, by his estimable lady. 
Masters Matthew, Mark, Lake, and John Over* 

come. 
Misses Dorcas, Tahitha, Rachel, and Hannah 

Overcome, by their interesting children. 
Peggy, by the female help. 

The poor man is really grateful; — it is a most 
welcome and unexpected relief. He tries to ex- 
press his thanks, — his voice falters, — he chokes, — 
and bursts into tears. That is the great effect of 
the evening. The sharp-sighted lady cries a little 
with one eye, and counts the strings of onions, 
and the rest of the things, with the other. The 



j 



96 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

children stand ready for a spring at the apples. 
The female help weeps after the noisy fashion of 
untutored handmaids. 

Now this is all very well as charity, but do let 
the kind visitors remember they get their money's 
worth. If you pay a quarter for dri/ crying, done 
by a second-rate actor, how much ought you to 
pay for real hot, wet tears, out of the honest eyes ] 

of a gentleman who is not acting, but sobbing in i 

earnest ? 1 

All I meant to say, when I began, was, that 
this was not a surprise-party where I read these I 

few lines that follow: — 



We will not speak of years to-night ; 

For what have years to bring, 
But larger floods of love and liijht 

And sweeter songs to sing ? 

We will not drown in wordy praise 
The kindly thoughts that rise; 

If friendship owns one tender phrase, 
He reads it in our eyes. 

We need not waste our schoolboy airt 
To gild this notch of time ; 

Forgive me, if my wayward heart 
Has throbbed in artless rhj-me. 

Enough for him the silent grasp 
That knits us hand in hand, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 97 

And he the bracelet's radiant clasp 
That locks our circling band. 

^ Strength to his hours of manly toil ! 

Peace to his starlit dreams! 
Who loves alike the furrowed soil, 
The music-haunted streams ! 

Sweet smiles to keep forever bright 

The sunshine on his lips, 
And faith, that sees the ring of light 

Round Nature's last eclipse! 

One of our boarders has been talking in 

such strong language that I am almost afraid to 
report it. However, as he seems to be really 
honest and is so very sincere in his local preju- 
dices, I don't believe anybody will be very angry 
with him. 

It is here, Sir ! right here ! — said the little de- 
formed gentleman, — in this old new city of Bos- 
ton, — this remote provincial corner of a provincial 
nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, 
and was fighting before we were born, and will 
be fighting when we are dead and gone, — please 
God! The battle goes on everywhere throughout 
civilization ; but here, here, here ! is the broad 
white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, 
peace and good-will to men, and, next to that, 
the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each 



98 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

individual immortal soul! The three-hilled city 
against the seven-hilled city ! That is it, Sir, — 
nothing less than that ; and if you know what 
that means, I don't think you'll ask for anything 
more. I swear to you, Sir, I beUeve that these 
two centres of civilization are just exactly the two 
points that close the circuit in the battery of our 
planetary intelligence ! And I believe there are 
spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen 
Neptune, — ay. Sir, from the systems of Sirius and 
Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint 
stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance 
that we call the nebula of Orion, — looking on, 
Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which 
are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the acci- 
dents and hindrances of humanity or man himself, 
Sir, — the stupendous abortion, the illustrious fail- 
ure that he is, if the three-hilled city does not 
ride down and trample out the seven-hilled city! 

Steam's up ! — said the young man John, 

so called, in a low tone. — Three hundred and 
sixty-five tons to the square inch. Let him blow 
her off, or he'll bu'st his b'iler. 

The divinity-student took it calmly, only whis- 
pering that he thought there was a little confu- 
sion of images between a galvanic battery and a 
charge of cavalry. 

But the Koh-i-noor — the gentleman, you re- 
member, with a very large diamond in his shirt- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 99 

front — laughed his scornful laugh, and made as 
if to speak. 

Sail in, Metropolis! — said that same young 
man John, by name. And then, in a lower tone, 
not meaning to be heard, — Now, then. Ma'am 
Allen! 

But he was heard, — and the Koh-i-noor's face 
turned so white with rage, that his blue-black 
moustache and beard looked fearful, seen against 
it. He grinned with wrath, and caught at a tum- 
bler, as if he would have thrown it or its con- 
tents at the speaker. The young Marylander fixed 
his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand 
on his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found 
it was held so that he could not move it. It was 
of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, 
and in that deadly Indian hug in which men 
wrestle with their eyes ; — over in five seconds, 
but breaks one of their two backs, and is good 
for threescore years and ten ; — one trial enough, 
— settles the whole matter, — just as when two 
feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and 
dunghill, come together, — after a jump or two at 
each other, and a few sharp kicks, there is the end 
of it ; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur^ with the 
beaten party in all the social relations for all the 
rest of his days. 

\I cannot philosophically account for the Koh-i- 
noor's wrath. For though a cosmetic is sold, bear- 



100 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ing the name of the lady to whom reference was 
made by the young person John, yet, as it is 
publicly asserted in respectable prints that this 
cosmetic is not a dye^ I see no reason why he 
should have felt offended by any suggestion that 
he was indebted to it or its authoress. I have no 
doubt that there are certain exceptional complex- 
ions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, 
is natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an 
albiness in London once, for sixpence, (including 
the inspection of a stuffed bo a- constrictor,) who 
looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A 
young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair 
all in little pellets of the size of marrowfat peas. 
One of my own classmates has undergone a sin- 
gular change of late years, — his hair losing its 
original tint, and getting a remarkable discolored 
look ; and another has ceased to cultivate any hair 
at all over the vertex or crown of the head. So I 
am perfectly willing to believe that the purple- 
black of the Koh-i-noor's moustache and whiskers 
is constitutional and not pigmentary. But I can't 
think why he got so angry, j 

The intelligent reader will understand that all 
this pantomine of the threatened onslaught and its 
suppression passed so quickly that it was all over 
by the time the other end of the table found out 
there was a di&turbance ; just as a man chopping 
wood half a mile off may be seen resting on his 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 101 

axe at the instant you hear the last blow he 
struck. So you will please to observe that the 
Little Gentleman was not interrupted during the 
time im. plied by these ex-post-facto remarks of 
mine, but for some ten or fifteen seconds only. 

He did not seem to mind the interruption at 
all, for he started again. The "Sir" of his ha- 
rangue was no doubt addressed to myself more 
than anybody else, but he often uses it in dis- 
course as if he were talking with some imaginary 
opponent. 

America, Sir, — he exclaimed, — is the only 

place where man is full-grown ! 

He straightened himself up, as he spoke, stand- 
ing on the top round of his high chair, I suppose, 
and so presented the larger part of his little figure 
to the view of the boarders. 

It was next to impossible to keep from laugh- 
ing. The commentary was so strange an illustra- 
tion of the text! 

I thought it was time to put in a word ; tor I 
have lived in foreign parts, and am more or less 
cosmopolitan. 

I doubt if we have more practical freedom in 
America than they have in England, — I said. — 
An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and 
politics. Mr. Martineau speculates as freely as 
ever Dr. Channing did, and Mr. Bright is as in- 
dependent as Mr. Seward. 



102 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Sir, — said he, — it isn't what a man thinks or 
says, bat when and where and to whom he thinks 
and says it. A man with a flint and steel strik- 
ing sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and 
striking them over a tinder-box is another. The 
free Englishman is born under protest ; he lives 
and dies under protest, — a tolerated, but not a 
welcome fact. Is not freethinker a term of re- 
proach in England? The same idea in the soul 
of an Englishman who struggled up to it and 
still holds it antagonistically^ and in the soul of an 
American to whom it is congenital .and spontane- 
ous, and often unrecognized, except as an element 
blended with all his thoughts, a natural move- 
ment, like the drawing of his breath or the beat- 
ing of his heart, is a very different thing. You 
may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, 
but he is always wanting to be on all-fours. 
Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is 
like the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from 
his infancy upwards. The American baby sucks 
in freedom with the milk of the breast at which 
he hangs. 

That's a good joke, — said the young fel- 
low John, — considerin' it commonly belongs to a 
female Paddy. 

I thousrht — I will not be certain — that the 
Little Gentleman winked, as if he had been hit 
somewhere — as I have no doubt Dr. Darwin did 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 103 

when the wooden-spoon suggestion upset his theory 
about why, etc. If he winked, however, he did 
not dodge. 

A lively comment! — he said. — But Rome, in 
her great founder, sucked the blood of empire out 
of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet- 
nurse is only a convenient vessel through which 
the American infant gets the life-blood of this virgin 
soil. Sir, that is making man over again, on the 
sunset pattern ! You don't think what we are do- 
ing and going to do here. "Why, Sir, while com- 
mentators are bothering themselves with interpre- 
tation of prophecies, we have got the new heavens 
and the new earth over us and under us! Was 
there ever anything in Italy, I should like to know, 
like a Boston sunset ? 

This time there was a laugh, and the little 

man himself almost smiled. 

Yes, — Boston sunsets ; — perhaps they're as 
good in some other places, but I know 'em best 
here. Anyhow, the American skies are different 
from anything they see in the Old World. Yes, 
and the rocks are different, and the soil is differ- 
ent, and everything that comes out of the soil, 
from grass up to Indians, is different. And now 
that the provisional races are dying out 

What do you mean by the provisional 

races, Sir? — said the divinity-student, interrupting 
him. 



104 THE PROFESS OE AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Why, the aboriginal bipeds, to be sure, — he 
answered, — the red-crayon sketch of humanity 
laid on the canvas before the colors for the real 
manhood were ready. 

I hope they will come to something yet, — said 
the divinity-student. 

Irreclaimable, Sir, — irreclaimable! — said the Lit- 
tle Gentleman. — Cheaper to breed white men than 
domesticate a nation of red ones. When you can 
get the bitter out of the partridge's thigh, you can 
make an enlightened commonwealth of Indians. 
A provisional race. Sir, — nothing more. Exhaled 
carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, kept down 
the bears and catamounts, enjoyed themselves in 
scalping and being scalped, and then passed away 
or are passing away, according to the programme. 

Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man 
has to acclimate himself. It takes him a good 
while ; but he will come all right by-and-by, Sir, 
— as sound as a woodchuck, — as sound as a mus- 
quash ! 

A new nursery. Sir, with Lake Superior and 
Huron and aU the rest of 'em for wash-basins I 
A new race, and a whole new world for the new- 
born human soul to work in ! And Boston is the 
brain of it, and has been any time these hundred 
years! That's all I claim for Boston, — that it is 
the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore 
of the planet. 



THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 105 

And the grand emporium of modesty, — 

said the divinity-student, a little mischievously. 

Oh, don't talk to me of modesty! — answered 
the Little Gentleman, — I'm past that! There isn't 
a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, 
from pitching the tea overboard to the last eccle- 
siastical lie it tore into tatters and flung into the 
vdock, that wasn't thought very indelicate by some 
fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of 
commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted 
into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of 
ours has a fit of thinking come over it. — No, Sir, 
— show me any other place that is, or was since 
the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and 
social influence are so fairly divided between the 
stationary and the progressive classes! Show me 
any other place where every other drawing-room is 
not a chamber of the Inquisition, with papas and 
mammas for inquisitors, — and the cold shoulder, 
instead of the " dry pan and the gradual fire," the 
punishment of "heresy"! 

We think Baltimore is a pretty civilized 

kind of a village, — said the young Marylander, 
good-naturedly. — But I suppose you can't forgive 
it for always keeping a little ahead of Boston in 
point of numbers, — teU the truth now. Are we 
not the centre of something ? 

Ah, indeed, to be sure you are. You are the 
gastronomic metropolis of the Union. Why don't 

6* 



106 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

you put a canvas-back duck on the top of the 
Washington column ? Why don't you get that 
lady off from Battle Monument and plant a terra- 
pin in her place ? Why will you ask for other 
glories when you have soft crabs? No, Sir, — you 
live too well to think as hard as we do in Boston. 
Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann ; 
rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly ; but you 
— if you open your mouths to speak, Nature 
stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice of 
the breast of your divine bird, and silences all 
your aspirations. 

And what of Philadelphia? — said the Marylander. 

Oh, Philadelphia? — Waterworks, — killed by the 
Croton and Cochituate ; — Ben Franklin, — bor- 
rowed from Boston ; — David Rittenhouse, — made 
an orrery ; — Benjamin Rush, — made a medical 
system : — both interesting to antiquarians ; — great 
Red-river raft of medical students, — spontaneous 
generation of professors to match; — more widely 
known through the Moyamensing hose-company, 
and the Wistar parties; — for geological section 
of social strata, go to The Club. — Good place to 
live in, — first-rate market, — tip-top peaches. — 
What do we know about Philadelphia, except that 
the engine-companies are always shooting each 
other ? 

And what do you say to Ne' York ? — asked 
the Koh-i-noor. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 107 

A great city, Sir, — replied the Little Gentleman, 
— a very opulent, splendid city. A point of tran- 
sit of n>ach that is remarkable, and of perma- 
nence for much that is respectable. A great 
money-centre. San Francisco with the mines 
above-ground, — and some of 'em under the side- 
walks. I have seen next to nothing grandiose^ 
out of New York, in all our cities. It makes 'em 
all look paltry and petty. Has many elements of 
civilization. May stop where Venice did, though, 
for aught we know. — The order of its develop- 
ment is just this; — Wealth; architecture; uphol- 
stery; painting; sculpture. Printing, as a mechan- 
ical art, — just as Nicholas Jenson and the Aldi, 
who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for 
it. Journalism, which is the accident of business 
and crowded populations, in great perfection. Ven- 
ice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese and 
Tintoretto, — great colorists, mark you, magnificent 
on the flesh-and-blood side of Art, — but look over 
to Florence and see who lie in Santa Croce, and 
ask out of whose loins Dante sprung! 

Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal 
Palace, and her Church of St. Mark, and her 
Casa d' Oro, and the rest of her golden houses; 
and Venice had great pictures and good music; 
and Venice had a Golden Book, in which all the 
large tax-payers had their names written ; — but 
all that did not make Venice the brain of Italy. 



108 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I tell you what, Sir, — with all these magnificent 
appliances of civilization, it is time we began to 
hear something from the jeunesse doree whose 
names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous, 
splendid, marble-palaced Venice, — something in 
the higher walks of literature, — something in the 
councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I grant 
you. Sir ; now, then, for vast libraries, and for 
mighty scholars and thinkers and statesmen, — five 
for every Boston one, as the population is to ours, 
— ten to one more properly, in virtue of centraliz- 
ing attraction as the alleged metropolis, — and not 
call our people provincials, and have to come beg- 
ging to us to write the lives of Hendrik Hudson 
and Gouverneur Morris I 

The Little Gentleman was on his hobby, 

exalting his own city at the expense of every 
other place. I have my doubts if he had been in 
either of the cities he had been talking about. I 
was just going to say something to sober him 
down, if I could, when the young Marylander 
spoke up. 

Come, now, — he said, — what's the use of these 
comparisons ? Didn't I hear this gentleman say- 
ing, the other day, that every American owns all 
America? If you have really got more brains in 
Boston than other folks, as you seem to think, 
who hates you for it, except a pack of scribbling 
fools? If I like Broadway better than Washing- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 109 

ton Street, what then? I own them both, as much 
as anybody owns either. I am an American, — 
and wherever I look up and see the stars and 
stripes overhead, that is home to me! 

He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the em- 
blazoned folds crackling over him in the breeze. 
We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should 
see the national flag by so doing. The sight of 
the dingy ceiling and the gas-fixture depending 
therefrom dispelled the illusion. 

Bravo I bravo!— ^ said the venerable gentleman on 
the other side of the table. — Those are the senti- 
ments of Washington's Farewell Address. Noth- 
ing better than that since the last chapter in Reve- 
lations. Five-and-forty years ago there used .to be 
Washington societies, and little boys used to walli 
in processions, each little boy having a copy of 
the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck 
by a ribbon. Why don't they now? Why don't 
they now ? I saw enough of hating each other in 
the old Federal • times ; now let's love each other, 
I say, — let's love each other, and not try to make 
it out that there isn't any place fit to live in ex- 
cept the one we happen to be born in. 

It dwarfs the mind, I think, — said I, — to feed 
it on any localism. The full stafure of manhood 
is shrivelled 

The color burst up into my cheeks. What was 
1 saying, — I, who would not for the world have 



110 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allu- 
sion ? 

I will go, — he said, — and made a movement 
with his left arm to let himself down from his 
high chair. 

No, — no, — he doesn't mean it, — you must not 
go, — said a kind voice next him ; and a soft, 
white hand was laid upon his arm. < 

Iris, my dear! — exclaimed another voice, as of 
a female, in accents that might be considered a 
strong atmospheric solution of di^ty with very little 
flavor of grace. 

She did not move for this address, and there 
was a tableau that lasted some seconds. For the 
young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood, 
and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little 
creature covered with Nature's insults, looked 
straight into each other's eyes. 

Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever 
looked at him so in his life. Certainly the young 
girl never had looked into eyes that reached into 
her soul as these did. It was not that they were 
in themselves supernaturally bright, — but there 
was the sad fire in them that flames up from the 
soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman 
without hope, but, alas! not without emotion. To 
him it seemed as if those amber gates had been 
translucent as the brown water of a mountain- 
brook, and through them he had seen dimly into 



THE PROFESSOE AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Ill 

a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the sunrise 
of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all 
its bowers to ring with melody. 

That is my* image, of course, — not his. It was 
not a simile that was in his mind, or is in any- 
body's at such a moment, — it was a pang of 
wordless passion, and then a silent, inward moan. 
A lady's wish, — he said, with a certain gal- 
lantry of manner, — makes slaves of us all. — And 
Nature, who is kind to all her children, and never 
leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human 
failures without one little comfit of self-love at the 
bottom of his poor ragged pocket, — Nature sug- 
gested to him that he had turned his sentence 
•well; and he fell into a reverie, in which the old 
thoughts that were always hovering just outside 
the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watch- 
ing for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly 
well they would be ignominiously kicked out 
again as soon as Common Sense saw them, 
flocked in pellmell, — misty, fragmentary, vague, 
half-ashamed of themselves, but still shouldering 
up against his inner consciousness till it warmed 
with their contact : — John Wilkes's — the ugliest 
man's in England— saying, that with half-an- 
hour's start he would cut out the handsomest man 
in all the land in any woman's good graces; Ca- 
denus — old and savage — leading captive Stella 
and Vanessa; and then the stray line of a bal- 



112 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

lad, — " And a winning tongue had he," — as much 
as to say, it isn't looks, after all, but cunning 
words, that win our Eves over, — just as of old, 
when it was the worst-looking brute of the lot 
that got our grandmother to listen to his stuff, 
and so did the mischief. 

Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules 
with his club, subjugating man and woman in our 
fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the second 
by our handling of it, — we rehearse it, I say, by 
our own hearth-stones," with the cold poker as our 
club, and the exercise is easy. But when we 
come to real life, the poker is in the fire, and, ten 
to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot 
to hold; — lucky for us, if it is not white-hot, and 
we do not have to leave the skin of our hands 
sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it 
with a loud or silent cry ! 

1 am frightened when I find into what a 

labyrinth of human character and feeling I am 
winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to 
throw in a few studies of manner and costume as 
they pictured themselves for me from day to day. 
Chance has thrown together at the table with me 
a number of persons who are worth studying, and 
I mean not only to look on them, but, if I can, 
through them. You can get any man's or wom- 
an's secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your 
own, if you will only look patiently on them 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 113 

long enough. Nature is always applying her re- 
agents to character, if you will take the pains to 
watch her. Our studies of character, to change 
the image, are very much like the surveyor's tri- 
angulation of a geographical province We get a 
base-line in organization, always ; then we get an 
angle by sighting some distant object to which 
the passions or aspirations of the subject of our 
observation are tending ; then another ; — and so 
we construct our first triangle. Once fix a man's 
ideals, and for the most part the rest is easy. A 
wants to die worth half a million. Good. B 
(fen>ale) wants to catch him, — and outlive him. 
All tight. Minor details at our leisure. 

What is it, of all your experiences, of all your 
thoughts, of all your misdoings, that lies at the 
very bottom of the great heap of acts of con- 
sciousness which make up your past life ? What 
should you most dislike to tell your nearest 
friend ? — Be so good as to pause for a brief 
space, and shut the volume you hold with your 
finger between the pages. Oh, that is it ! 

What a confessional I have been sitting at, 
with the inward ear of my soul open, as the mul- 
titudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants 
came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a 
cry among the craggy hills ! 

At the house of a friend where I once passed 
the night was one of those stately upright cabinet- 



114 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

desks and cases of drawers which were not rare 
in prosperous families during the last century. It 
had held the clothes and the books and the papers 
of generation after generation. The hands that 
opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, 
and at last been folded in death. The children 
that played with the lower handles had got tall 
enough to open the desk, — to reach the upper 
shelves behind the folding-doors, — grown bent 
after a while, — and then followed those who had 
gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ran- 
sacked by a new generation. 

A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few 
years ago, and, being a quick-witted fellow, saw 
that all the space was not accounted for by the 
smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the 
desk. Prying about with busy eyes and fingers, 
he at length came upon a spring, on pressing 
which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding-place. 
It had never been opened but by the maker. The 
mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it as 
when the artisan closed it, — and when I saw it, 
it was as fresh as if that day finished. 

Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my 
sweet reader, which no hand but yours has ever 
opened, and which none that have known you 
seem to have suspected? What does it hold? — 
A sin ? — I hope not. 

What a strange thing an old dead sin laid 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 115 

aTv^ay in a secret drawer of the soul is; ! Must it 
some time or other be moistened with tears, until 
it comes to life again and begins to stir in our 
consciousness, — as the dry wheel-animalcule, look- 
ing like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is 
wet with a drop of water ? 

Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered 
men and women walking about the streets who 
have the secret drawer in their hearts, which, if it 
were opened, would show as fresh as it was when 
they were in the flush of youth and its first trem- 
bling emotions. What it held will, perhaps, never 
be known, until they are dead and gone, and 
some curious eye lights on an old yellow letter 
with the fossil footprints of the extinct passion 
trodden thick all over it. 

There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly 
believe, excepting the young girl, who has not a 
story of the heart to tell, if one could only get the 
secret drawer open. Even this arid female, whose 
armor of black bombazine looks stronger against 
the shafts of love than any cuirass of triple brass, 
has had her sentimental history, if I am not mis- 
taken. I will tell you my reason for suspect- 
ing it. 

Like many other old women, she shows a great 
nervousness and restlessness whenever I venture 
to express any opinion upon a class of subjects 
which can hardly be said to belong to any man 



116 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

or set of men as their strictly private property, — 
not even to the clergy, or the newspapers com- 
monly called " religious." Now, although it would 
be a great luxury to me to obtain my opinions 
by contract, ready-made, from a professional man, 
and although I have a constitutional kindly feel- 
ing to all sorts of good people which would make 
me happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that 
were possible, still I must have an idea, now and 
then, as to the meaning of life ; and though the 
only condition of peace in this world is to have 
no ideas, or, at least, not to express them, with 
reference to such subjects, I can't afford to pay 
quite so much as that even for peace. 

I find that there is a very prevalent opinion 
among the dwellers on the shores of Sir Isaac 
Newton's Ocean of Truth, that sail Jish, which 
have been taken from it a good while ago, split 
open, cured and dried, are the only proper and 
allowable food for reasonable people. I maintain, 
on the other hand, that there are a number of live 
fish still swimming in it, and that every one of us 
has a right to see if he cannot catch some of 
them. Sometimes I please myself with the idea 
that I have landed an actual living fish, small, 
perhaps, but with rosy gills and silvery scales. 
Then I find the consumers of nothing but the 
salted and dried article insist that it is poisonous, 
simply because it is alive, and cry out to people 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117 

not to touch it. 1 have not found, however, that 
people mind them much. 

The poor boarder in bombazine is my dyna- 
mometer. I try every questionable proposition on 
her. If she winces, I must be prepared for an 
outcry from the other old women. I frightened 
her, the other day, by saying that failh^ as an in- 
tellectual state, was self-reliance, which, if you 
have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so 
much of a paradox as it sounds at first. So she 
sent me a book to read which was to cure me 
of that error. It was an old book, and looked as 
if it had not been opened for a long time. What 
should drop out of it, one day, but a small heart- 
shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight, 
coarse, brown hair which sets off the sharp faces 
of so many thin-flanked, large-handed bumpkins? 
I read upon the paper the name " Hiram." — 
Love ! love ! love ! — everywhere I everywhere I — 
under diamonds and housemaids' "jewelry," — lift- 
ing the marrowy camel's-hair, and rustling even 
the black bombazine ! — No, no, — I think she 
never was pretty, but she was young once, and 
wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos. 
"We shall find that the poor little crooked man 
has been in love, or is in love, or will be in love 
before we have done with him, for aught that I 
know! 

Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in 



118 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the world where the seemingly prosaic table had 
not a living fresco for its background, where you 
could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of 
some upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters 
of smouldering or burnt-out passions ? You look 
on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum 
of your neighbor, and no more think of the real 
life that underlies this despoiled and dismantled 
womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as 
having once been full of the juices and the 
nervous thrills of throbbing and self-conscious be- 
ing. There is a wild creature under that long 
yellow pin which serves as brooch for the bomba- 
zine cuirass, — a wild creature, which I venture to 
say would leap in his cage, if I should stir him, 
quiet as you think him. A heart which has been 
domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as 
tranquil as a tame bulfinch ; but a wild heart 
which has never been fairly broken in flutters 
fiercely long after you think time has tamed it 
down, — like that purple finch I had the other 
day, which could not be approached without such 
palpitations and frantic flings against the bars of 
his cage, that I had to send him back and get a 
little orthodox canary which had learned to be 
quiet and never mind the wires or his keeper's 
handling. I will tell you my wicked, but half 
involuntary experiment on the wild heart under 
the faded bombazine. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 119 

Was there ever a person in the room with you, 
marked by any special weakness or peculiarity, 
with whom you could be two hours and not touch 
the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful ten- 
dency to do just this thing. If a man has a 
brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it. 
If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than 
that, go before him, limping. I could never meet 
an Irish gentleman — if it had been the Duke of 
Wellington himself — without stumbling upon the 
word "Paddy," — which I use rarely in my com- 
mon talk. 

I have been worried to know whether this was 
owing to some innate depravity of disposition on 
my part, some malignant torturing instinct, which, 
under different circumstances, might have made a 
Fijian anthropophagus of me, or to some law of 
thought for which I was not answerable. It is, I 
am convinced, a kind of physical fact like endoS' 
mosiSf with which some of you are acquainted. A 
thin film of politeness separates the unspoken and 
unspeakable current of thought from the stream 
of conversation. After a time one begins to soak 
through and mingle with the other. 

We were talking about names, one day. — Was 
there ever anything, — I said, — like the Yankee 
for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, de- 
testable appellations, — inventing or finding them, 
— since the time of Praise- God Barebones ? I 



120 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

heard a country-boy once talking of another whom 
he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridg-e 
is common enough, but this sounded oddly. It 
seems the boy was christened Lord PiU, — and 
called, for convenience, as above. I have heard 
a charming little girl, belonging to an intelligent 
family in the country, called Anges invariably; 
doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. 
How can a man name an innocent new-born child, 

that never did him any harm, Hiram ? The 

poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, 
turned toward me, but I was stupid, and went 
on. — To think of a man going through life sad- 
dled with such an abominable name as that! 

The poor relation grew very uneasy. — I con- 
tinued; for I never thought of all this till after- 
wards. — I knew one young fellow, a good many 
years ago, by the name of Hiram 

What's got into you. Cousin, — said our 

landlady, — to look so? — There! you've upset your 
teacup ! 

It suddenly occurred to me what I had been 
doing, and I saw the poor woman had her hand 
at her throat ; she was half-choking with the 
"hysteric ball," — a very odd symptom, as you 
know, which nervous women often complain of. 
What business had I to be trying experiments on 
this forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better 
be watching that young girl. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 121 

Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can 
hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent 
that one can almost count her heart-beats by the 
flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not 
seem to be shy, either. I think she does not know- 
enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me 
like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found 
in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never 
received any wrong at the hand of man, show no 
alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness 
of his presence. 

The first thing will be to see how she and our 
little deformed gentleman get along together ; for, 
as I have told you, they sit side by side. The 
next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna, 
— the "Model" and so forth, as the white-neck- 
cloth called her. The intention of that estimable 
lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. 
I suppose there is no help for it, and I don't 
doubt this young lady knows how to take care of 
herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned 
loose in boarding-houses. Look here now! There 
is that jewel of his race, whom I have called for 
convenience the Koh-i-noor, (you understand it is 
quite out of the question for me to use the family 
names of our boarders, unless I want to get into 
trouble,) — I say, the gentleman with the diamond 
is looking very often and very intently, it seems 
to me, down toward the farther corner of the table, 

6 



122 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

where sits, our amber-eyed blonde. The landlady's 
daughter does not. look pleased, it seems to me, at 
this, nor at those other attentions which the gen- 
tleman referred to has, as I have learned, pressed 
upon the newly-arrived young person. The land- 
lady made a communication to me, within a few 
days after the arrival of Miss Iris, which I will 
repeat to the best of my remembrance. 

He, (the person I have been speaking of,) — 
she said, — seemed to be kinder hankerin' round 
after that young woman. It had hurt her daugh* 
ter's feelin's a good deal, that the gentleman she 
was a-keepin' company with should be ofFerin' 
tickets and tryin' to send presents * to them that 
he'd never know'd till jest a little spell ago, — 
and he as good as merried, so fur as solemn 
promises went, to as respectable a young lady, if 
she did say so, as any there was round, who- 
somever they might be. 

Tickets ! presents I — said I. — What tickets, what 
presents has he had the impertinence to be offer- 
ing to that young lady ? 

Tickets to the Museum, — said the landlady. — 
There is them that's glad enough to go to the 
Museum, when tickets is given 'em ; but some of 
'em ha'n't had a ticket sence Cenderilla was play- 
ed, — and now he must be offerin' 'em to this 
ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is, 
that's come to make more mischief than her 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 123 

board's worth. But it a'n't her fault, — said the 
landlady, relenting ; — and that aunt of hers, o^ 
whatever she is, served him right enough. 

Why, what did she do ? 

Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and 
dropped it out o' winder. 

Dropped ? dropped what ? — I said. 

Why, the soap, — said the landlady. 

It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate 
himself, had sent an elegant package of perfumed 
soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression 
of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after 
having met with the unfortunate treatment referred 
to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Frank- 
lin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in 
most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in con- 
sequence, so that his hands were a frequent sub- 
ject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like 
a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition. 

After watching daily for a time, I think I can 
see clearly into the relation which is growing up 
between the little gentleman and the young lady. 
She shows a tenderness to him that I can't help 
being interested in. If he was her crippled child, 
instead of being more than old enough to be her 
father, she could not treat him more kindly. The 
landlady's daughter said, the other day, she be- 
lieved that girl was settin' her cap for the Little 
Gentleman. 



124 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Some of them young folks is very artful, — said 
her mother, — and there is them that would merry 
Lazarus, if he'd only picked up crumbs enough. 
I don't think, though, this is one of that sort ; 
she's kinder childlike, — said the landlady, — and 
maybe never had any dolls to play with ; for they 
say her folks was poor before Ma'am undertook 
to see to her teachin' and board her and clothe 
her. 

I could not help overhearing this conversation. 
" Board her and clothe her I " — speaking of such 
a young creature! Oh, dear! — Yes, — she must 
be fed, — just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this 
establishment. Somebody must pay for it. Some- 
body has a right to watch her and see how much 
it takes to " keep " her, and growl at her, if she 
has too good an appetite. Somebody has a right 
to keep an eye on her and take care that she does 
not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own 
youth over again in those fresh features and rising 
reliefs of half-sculptured womanhood, and, seeing 
its loveliness, forget her lessons of neutral- tinted 
propriety, and open the cases that hold her own 
ornaments to find for her a necklace or a bracelet 
or a pair of ear-rings, — those golden lamps that 
light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks 
of young beauties, — swinging in a semibarbaric 
splendor that carries the wild fancy to Abyssinian 
queens and musky Odalisques! I don't believe 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 125 

any woman has utterly given up the great firm 
of Mundus & Co., so long as she wears ear-rings. 

I think Iris loves to hear the Little Gentleman 
talk. She smiles sometimes at his vehement state- 
ments, but never laughs at him. When he speaks 
to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon 
him. This may be only natural good-breeding, so 
to speak, but it is worth noticing. I have often 
observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences 
of inferior collective intelligence, have this in com- 
mon : the least thing draws oft' their minds, when 
you are speaking to them. I love this young 
creature's rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor 
while he is speaking. 

He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or 
two after she came, he was silent and seemed 
nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting 
the talk into his own hands, and is obviously con- 
scious that he has at least one interested listener. 
Once or twice I have seen marks of special atten- 
tion to personal adornment, — a ruffled shirt-bosom, 
one day, and a diamond pin in it, — not so very 
large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more lustrous. 1 
mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his 
right hand. I was attracted by a very handsome 
red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or something of the 
sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is 
a handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that 
the cast mentioned was taken from his arm. After 



126 THE "PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

all, ihis is just what I should expect. It is not 
very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of 
them, running away with the whole strength, and, 
therefore, with the whole beauty, which we should 
never have noticed, if it had been divided equally 
between all four extremities. K it is so, of course 
he is proud of his one strong and beautiful arm; 
that is human nature. I am afraid he can hardly 
help betraying his favoritism, as people who have 
any one showy point are apt to do, — especially 
dentists with handsome teeth, who always smUe 
back to their last molars. 

Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and 
next but one to the calm lady who has her in 
charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to 
each other. 

That is an admirable woman. Sir, — he said to 
me one day, as we sat alone at the table after 
breakfast, — an admirable woman, Sir, — and I hate 
her. 

Of course, I begged an explanation. 

An admu-able woman, Sir, because she does 
good things, and even kind things, — takes care of 
this — this — young lady — we have here, talks like 
a sensible person, and always looks as if she was 
doing her duty with all her might. I hate her 
because her voice sounds as if it never trembled, 
and her eyes look as if she never knew what it 
was to cry. Besides, she looks at me, Sir, stares 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 127 

at me, as if she wanted to get an image of me 
for some gallery in her brain, — and we don't love 

to be looked at in this way, we that have 1 

hate her, — I hate her, — her eyes kill me, — it is 
like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so, 
• — the sooner she goes home, the better. I don't 
want a woman to weigh me in a balance ; there 
are men enough for that sort of work. The judi- 
cial character isn't captivating in females, Sir. A 
woman fascinates a man quite as often by what 
she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers 
twilight to daylight; and a man doesn't think 
rriuch of, nor care much for, a woman outside of 
his household, unless he can couple the idea of 
love, past, present, or future, with her. I don't 
believe the Devil would give half as much for the 
services of a sinner as he would for those of one 
of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts 
in a way to make them unpleasing. — That young 
girl wants a tender nature to cherish her and give 
her a chance to put out her leaves, — sunshine, 
and not east winds. 

He was silent, — and sat looking at his hand- 
some left hand with the red stone ring upon it. — 
Is he going to fall in love with Iris? 

Here are some lines I read to the boarders the 
other day : — 



128 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



THE CROOKED FOOTPATH. 

All, here it is ! the sliding rail 

That marks the old remembered spot, — 
The gap that struck our schoolboy trail, — . 

The crooked path across the lot. 

It left the road by school and church, 
A pencilled shadow, nothing more, 

That parted from the silver birch 
And ended at the farmhouse door. 

No line or compass traced its i>lan; 

With frequent bends to left or right, 
In aimless, wayward curves it ran. 

But always kept the door in sight. 

The gabled porch, with woodbine green, — 
The broken millstone at the sill, — 

Though many a rood might stretch between. 
The truant child could see them still. 

No rocks across the pathway He, — 
No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown, — 

And yet it winds, we know not why, 
And turns as if for tree or stone. 

Perhaps some lover trod the Avay 

With shaking knees and leaping heart, — 

And so it often runs astray 

With sinuous sweep or sudden start 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 129 

Or one, perchance, with clouded brain 

From some unholy banquet reeled, — 
And since, our devious steps maintain 

His track across the trodden field. 

Nay, deem not thus, — no earthborn will 

Could ever trace a faultless line ; 
Our truest steps are human still, — 

To walk unswerving were divine ! 

Truants from love, we dream of wrath ; — 

Oh, rather let us trust the more ! 
Through all the wanderings of the path, 

We still can see our Father's door I 



V. 

The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup. 

I HAVE a long theological talk to relate, which 
must be dull reading to some of my young and 
vivacious friends. I don't know, however, that 
any of them have entered into a contract to read 
all that I write, or that L have promised always 
to write to please them. What if I should some- 
times write to please myself? 

Now you must know that there are a great 
many things which interest me, to some of which 
this or that particular class of readers may be 

6* 



130 THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

totally indifferent. I love Nature, and human 
nature, its thoughts, affections, dreams, aspirations, 
delusions, ^ Art in all its forms, — virtu in all its 
eccentricities, — old stories from black-letter vol- 
umes and yellow manuscripts, and new projects 
out of hot brains not yet imbedded in the snows 
of age. I love the generous impulses of the re- 
former ; but not less does my imagination feed 
itself upon the old litanies, so often warmed by 
the human breath upon which they were wafted 
to Heaven that they glow through our frames like 
our own heart's blood. I hope I love good men 
and women ; I know that they never speak a 
word to me, even if it be of question or blame, 
that I do not take pleasantly, if it is expressed 
with a reasonable amount of human kindness. 

I have before me at -this time a beautiful and 
affecting letter, which I have hesitated to answer, 
though the postmark upon it gave its direction, 
and the name is one which is known to all, in 
some of its representatives. It contains no re- 
proach, only a delicately-hinted fear. Speak gen- 
tly, as this dear lady has spoken, and there is no 
heart so insensible that.it does not answer to the 
appeal, no intellect so virile that it does not own 
a certain deference to the claims of age, of child- 
hood, of sensitive and timid natures, when they 
plead with it not to look at those sacred things 
by the broad daylight which they see in mystic 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 131 

shadow. How grateful would it be to make per- 
petual peace with these pleading saints and their 
confessors, by the simple act that silences all com- 
plainings ! Sleep, sleep, sleep ! says the Arch- 
Enchantress of them all, — and pours her dark 
and potent anodyne, distilled over the fires that 
consumed her foes, — its large, round drops chang- 
ing, as we look, into the beads of her convert's 
rosary ! Silence ! the pride of reason ! cries another, 
whose whole life is spent in reasoning down rea- 
son. 

I hope I love good people, not for their sake, 
but for my own. And most assuredly, if any deed 
of wrong or word of bitterness led me into an act 
of disrespect towards that enlightened and excel- 
lent class of men who make it their calling to 
teach goodness and their duty to practise it, I 
should feel that I had done myself an injury 
rather than them. Go and talk with any profes- 
sional man holding any of the mediaeval creeds, 
choosing one who wears upon his features the 
mark of inward and outward health, who looks 
cheerful, intelligent, and kindly, and see how all 
your prejudices melt away in his presence! It is 
impossible to come into intimate relations with a 
large, sweet nature, such as you may often find 
in this class, without longing to be at one with 
it in all its modes of being and believing. But 
does it not occur to you that one may love truth 



132 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as he sees it, and his race as he views it, better 
than even the sympathy and approbation of many 
good men whom he honors, — better than sleeping 
to the sound of the Miserere or listening to the 
repetition of an effete Confession of Faith ? 

The three learned professions have but recently 
emerged from a state of quasi barbarism. None 
of them like too well to be told of it, but it must 
be sounded in their ears whenever they put on 
airs. When a man has taken an overdose of 
laudanum, the doctors tell us to place him be- 
tween two persons who shall make him walk up 
and down incessantly; and if he still cannot be 
kept from going to sleep, they say that a lash or 
two over his back is of great assistance. 

So we must keep the doctors awake by telling 
them that they have not yet shaken off astrology 
and the doctrine of signatures, as is shown by the 
form of their prescriptions, and their use of nitrate 
of silver, which turns epileptics into Ethiopians. 
If that is not enough, they must be given over 
to the scourgers, who like their task and get good 
fees for it. A few score years ago, sick people 
were made to swallow burnt toads and powdered 
earthworms and the expressed juice of wood-lice. 
The physician of Charles I. and II. prescribed 
abominations not to be named. Barbarism, as 
bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of 
this barbarism linger even in the greatly improved 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ,133 

medical science of our century. So while the 
solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the 
world over, the harlequin pseudo-science jumps on 
to the stage, whip in hand, with half-a-dozen 
somersets, and begins laying about him. 

In 1817, perhaps you remember, the law of 
wager by battle was unrepealed, and the rascally 
murderous, and worse than murderous, clown, 
Abraham Thornton, put on his gantlet in open 
court and defied the appellant to hft the other 
which he threw down. It was not until the reign 
of George II. that the statutes against witchcraft 
were repealed. As for the English Court of Chan- 
cery, we know that its antiquated abuses form one 
of the staples of common proverbs and popular 
literature. So the laws and the lawyers have to 
be watched perpetually by public opinion as much 
as the doctors do. 

I don't think the other profession is an excep- 
tion. When the Reverend Mr. Cauvin and his 
associates burned my distinguished scientific broth- 
er, — he was burned with green fagots, which made 
it rather slow and painful, — it appears to me they 
were in a state of religions barbarism. The dog- 
mas of such people about the Father of Mankind 
and his creatures are of no more account in my 
opinion than those of a council of Aztecs. If a 
man picks your pocket, do you not consider him 
thereby disqualified to pronounce any authoritative 



134 ^THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

opinion on matters of ethics ? If a man hangs my 
ancient female relatives for sorcery, as they did in 
this neighborhood a little while ago, or burns my 
instructor for not believing as he does, I care no 
more for his religious edicts than I should for 
those of any other barbarian. 

Of course, a barbarian may hold many true 
opinions ; but when the ideas of the healing art, 
of the administration of justice, of Christian love, 
could not exclude systematic poisoning, judicial 
duelling, and murder for opinion's sake, I do not 
see how we can trust the verdict of that time re- 
lating to any subject which involves the primal 
instincts violated in these abominations and ab- 
surdities. — What if we are even now in a state 
of semi-harh^ucisml 

Perhaps some think we ought not to talk at 
table about such things. — I am not so sure of 
that. Religion and government appear to me the 
two subjects which of all others should belong to 
the common talk of people who enjoy the bless- 
ings of freedom. Think, one moment. The earth 
is a great factory-wheel, which, at every revolution 
on its axis, receives fifty thousand raw souls and 
turns off nearly the same number w^orked up more 
or less completely. There must be somewhere a 
population of two hundred thousand million, per- 
haps ten or a hundred times as many, earth-born 
intelligences. Life, as we call it, is nothing but 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 135 

the edge of the boundless ocean of existence 
where it comes on soundings. In this view, I do 
not see anything so fit to talk about, or half so 
interesting, as that which relates to the innumer- 
able majority of our fellow-creatures, the dead-liv- 
ing, who are hund-reds of thousands to one of the 
live-living, and with whom we all potentially be- 
long, though we have got tangled for the present 
in some parcels of fibrine, albumen, and phos- 
phates, that keep us on the minority side of the 
house. In point of fact, it. is one of the many 
results of Spiritualism to make the permanent 
destiny of the race a matter of common reflection 
and discourse, and a vehicle for the prevailing dis- 
belief of the Middle- Age doctrines on the subject. 
I cannot help thinking, when I remember how 
many conversations my friend and myself have re- 
ported, that it would be very extraordinary, if 
there were no mention of that class of subjects 
which involves all that we have and all that we 
hope, not merely for ourselves, but for the dear 
people whom we love best, — noble men, pure and 
lovely women, ingenuous children, — about the 
destiny of nine tenths of whom you know the 
opinions that would have been taught by those 
old man-roasting, woman-strangling dogmatists. — 
However, I fought this matter with one of our 
boarders the other day, and I am going to report 
the conversation. 



136 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The divinity-student came down, one morning, 
looking rather more serious than usual. He said 
little at breakfast-time, but lingered after the 
others, so that I, who am apt to be long at the 
table, found myself alone with him. 

When the rest were all gone, he turned his 
chair round towards mine, and began. 

I am afraid, — he said, •^— you express yourself a 
little too freely on a most important class of sub- 
jects. Is there not danger in introducing discus- 
sions or allusions relating to matters of religion 
into common discourse? 

Danger to what? — I asked. 

Danger to truth, — he replied, after a slight 
pause. 

I didn't know Truth was such an invalid, — 
I said. — How long is it since she could only take 
the air in a close carriage, with a gentleman in a 
black coat on the box? Let' me tell you a story, 
adapted to young persons, but which won't hurt 
older ones. 

There was a very little boy who had one 

of those balloons you may have seen, which are 
filled with light gas, and are held by a string to 
keep them from running off in aeronautic voyages 
on their own account. This little boy had a 
naughty brother, who said to him, one day, — 
Brother, pull down your balloon, so that I can 
look at it and take hold of it. Then the little 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 137 

boy pulled it clown. Now the naughty brother 
had a sharp pin in his hand, and he thrust it into 
the balloon, and all the gas oozed out, so that 
there was nothing left but a shrivelled skin. 

One evening, the little boy's father called him 
to the window to see the moon, which pleased 
him very much ; but presently he said, — Father, 
do not pull the string and bring down the moon, 
for my naughty brother will prick it, and then it 
will all shrivel up and we shall not see it any 
more. 

Then his father laughed, and told him how (the 
moon had been shining a good while, and would 
shine a good while longer, and that all we could 
do was to keep our windows clean, never letting 
the dust get too thick on them, and especially to 
keep our eyes open, but that we could not pull 
the moon down with a string, nor prick it with a 
pin. — Mind you this, too, the moon is no man's 
private property, but is seen from a good many 
parlor-windows. ; 

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a 

bubble, at a touch ; nay, you may kick it about 
all day, like a football, and it will be round and 
full at evening. Does, not Mr. Bryant say, that 
Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomo- 
tive, while Error dies of lockjaw if she scratches 
her finder? I never heard that a mathematician 
was alarmed for the safety of a demonstrated 



138 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

proposition. I think, generally, that fear of open 
discussion implies feebleness of inward conviction, 
>and great sensitiveness to , the expression of indi- 
vidual opinion is a mark of weakness. 

1 am not so much afraid for truth, — said 

the divinity-student, T— as for the conceptions of 
truth in the minds of persons not accustomed to 
judge wisely the opinions uttered before them. 

Would you, then, banish all allusions to mat- 
ters of this nature from the society of people who 
come together habitually ? 

I would be very careful in introducing them, — 
said the divinity- student. 

Yes, but friends of yours leave pamphlets in 
people's entries, to be picked up by nervous misses 
and hysteric housemaids, full of doctrines these 
people do not approve. Some of your friends stop 
little children in the street, and give them books, 
which their parents, who have had them baptized 
into the Christian fold and give them what they 
consider proper religious instruction, do not think 
fit for them. One would say it was fair enough 
to talk about matters thus forced upon people's 
attention. 

The divinity-student could not deny that this 
was what might be called opening the subject to 
the discussion of intelligent people. 

But, — he said, — the greatest objection is this, 
that persons who have not made a professional 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133 

study of theology are not competent to speak on 
snch subjects. Suppose a minister were to under- 
take to express opinions on medical subjects, for 
instance, would you not ^ think he was going be- 
yond his province? 

I laughed, — for I remembered John Wesley's 
"sulphur and supplication," and so many other 
cases where ministers had meddled with medicine, 
— sometimes well and sometimes ill, but, as a 
general rule, with a tremendous lurch to quackery, 
owing to their very loose way of admitting evi- 
dence, — that I could not help being amused. 

1 beg your pardon, — I said. — I do not wish 
to be impolite, but I was thinking of their cer- 
tificates to patent medicines. Let us look at this 
matter. 

If a minister had attended lectures on the theory 
and practice of medicine, delivered by those who 
had studied it most deeply, for thirty or forty 
years, at the rate of from fifty to one hundred a 
year, — if he had been constantly reading and 
hearing read the most approved text-books on the 
subject, — if he had seen medicine actually prac- 
tised according to different methods, daily, for the 
same length of time, — I should think, that if a 
person of average understanding, he was entitled 
to express an opinion on the subject of medicine, 
or else that his instructors were a set of ignorant 
and incompetent charlatans. 



140 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

If, before a medical practitioner woalJ allow me 
to enjoy the fall privileges of the healing ait, he 
expected me to affirm my belief in a considerable 
number of medical doetfines, drugs, and formulae, 
I should think that he thereby implied my right 
to discuss the same, and my ability to do so, if I 
knew how to express myself in English. 

Suppose, for instance, the Medical Society should 
refuse to give us an opiate, or to set a broken 
limb, until we had signed our belief in a certain 
number of propositions, — of which we will say 
this is the first: — 

I. All men's teeth are naturally in a state of 
total decay or caries, and, therefore, no man can 
bite until every one of them is extracted and a 
new set is inserted according to the principles of 
dentistry adopted by this Society. 

I, for one, should want to discuss that before 
signing my name to it, and I should say thisi^r- 
Why, no, that isn't true. There are a good many 
bad teeth, we all know, but a great many more 
good ones. You mustn't trust the dentists ; they 
are all the time looking at the people who have 
bad teeth, and such as are suffering from tooth- 
ache. The idea that you must pull out every one 
of every nice ,young man and young woman's 
natural teeth I Poh, poh I Nobody believes that. 
This tooth must be straightened, that must be 
filled with gold, and this other perhaps extracted; 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 141 

but it must be a very rare case, if they are all so 
bad as to require extraction; and if Ihey are, don't 
blame the poor soul for it ! Don't tell us, as some 
old "dentists used to, that everybody not only 
always has every tooth in his head good for noth- 
ing, but that he ought to have his head cut off as 
a punishment for that misfortune ! No, I can't 
sign Number One. Give us Number Two. 

II. We hold that no man can be well who does 
not agree with our views of the efficacy of calo- 
mel, and who does not take the doses of it pre- 
scribed in our tables, as there directed. 

To which I demur, questioning why it should 
be so, and get for answer the two following : — 

III. Every man who does not take our prepared 
calomel, as prescribed by us in our Constitution 
and By-Laws, is and must be a mass of disease 
from head to foot ; it being self-evident that he is 
simultaneously affected with Apoplexy, Arthritis, 
Ascites, Asphyxia, and Atrophy; with Borboryg- 
mus. Bronchitis, and Bulimia ; with Cachexia, 
Carcinoma, and Cretinismus ; and so on through 
the alphabet, to Xerophthalmia and Zona, with 
all possible and incompatible diseases which are 
necessary to make up a totally morbid state ; and 
he will certainly die, if he does not take freely of 
our prepared calomel, to be obtained only of one 
of our authorized agents. 

IV. No man shall be allowed to take our pre- 



142 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

pared calomel who does not give in his solemn 
adhesion to each and all of the above-named and 
the following propositions (from ten to a hundred) 
and show his mouth to certain of our apothecaries, 
who have not studied dentistry, to examine wheth- 
er all his teeth have been extracted and a new set 
inserted according to our regulations. 

Of course, the doctors have a right to say we 
shan't have any rhubarb, if we don't sign their 
articles, and that, if, after signing them, we ex- 
press doubts (in public) about any of them, they 
will cut us off from our jalap and squills, — but 
then to ask a fellow not to discuss the proposi- 
tions before he signs them is what I should call 
boiling it down a little too strong ! 

If we understand them, why can't we discuss 
them ? If we can't understand them, because we 
haven't taken a medical degree, what the Father 
of Lies do they ask us to sign them for ? 

Just so with the graver profession. Every now 
and then some of its members seem to lose com- 
mon sense and common humanity. The laymen 
have to keep setting the divines right constantly. 
Science, for instance, — in other words, knowledge, 
— is not the enemy of religion; for, if so, then 
religion would mean ignorance. But it is often 
the antagonist of school-divinity. 

Everybody knows the story of early astronomy 
and the school-divines. Come down a little later. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 143 

Archbishop Usher, a very learned Protestant prel- 
ate, tells us that the world was created on Sun- 
day, the twenty-thh'd of October, four thousand 
and four years before the birth of Christ. Deluge, 
December 7th, two thousand three hundred and 
forty-eight years b. c. — Yes, and the earth stands 
on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise. 
One statement is as near the truth as the other. 

Again, there is nothing so brutalizing to some 
natures as moral surgery. I have often wondered 
that Hogarth did not add one more picture to his 
four stages of Cruelty. Those wi'etched fools, rev- 
erend divines and others, who were strangling men 
and women for imaginary crimes a little more 
than a century ago among us, were set right by 
a layman, and very angry it made them to have 
him meddle. 

The good people of Northampton had a very 
remarkable man for their clergyman, — a man with 
a brain as nicely adjusted for certain mechanical 
processes as Babbage's calculating machine. The 
commentary of the laymen on the preaching and 
practising of Jonathan Edwards was, that, after 
twenty-three years of endurance, they turned him 
out by a vote of twenty to one, and passed a re- 
solve that he should never preach for them again. 
A man's logical and analytical adjustments are of 
little consequence, compared to his primary rela- 
tions with Nature and truth; and people have 



144 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sense enough to find it out in the long run ; they 
know what " logic " is worth. 

In that miserable delusion referred to above, the 
reverend Aztecs and Fijians argued rightly enough 
from their premises, no doubt, for many men can 
do this. But common sense and common human- 
ity were unfortunately left out from their premises, 
and a layman had to supply them. A hundred 
more years and many of the barbarisms still lin- 
gering among us will, of course, have disappeared 
like witch-hanging. But people are sensitive now, 
as they were then. You will see by this extract 
that the Rev. Cotton Mather did not like inter- 
meddling with his business very well. " Let the 
Levites of the Lord keep close to their Instruc- 
tions," he says, " and God will smite thro' the 
loins of those that rise up against them. I will re- 
port unto you a Thing which many Hundreds 
among us know to be true. The Godly Minister 
of a certain Town in Connecticut, when he had 
occasion to be absent on a hordes Day from his 
Flock, employ'd an honest Neighbour of some 
small Talents for a Mechanick^ to read a Sermon 
out of some good. Book unto 'em. This Honest, 
whom they ever counted also a Pious Man, had 
so much conceit of his Talents^ that instead of 
Reading a Sermon appointed, he to the Surprize 
of the People, fell to preaching one of his own. 
For his Text he took these Words, ' Despise not 



THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 145 

Prophecyings'' ; and in his Preachment he betook 
himself to bewail the Eiivij of the Clergy in ihe 
Land, in that they did not wish all the Lord^s 
People to be Prophets, and call forth Private Breth- 
ren publicity to prophesie. While he was thus in 
tlir3 midst of his Exercise, God smote him with 
horrible Madness; he was taken ravingly distract- 
ed ; the People were forc'd with violent Hands to 
carry him home. ... I will not mention his 
Name : He was reputed a Pious Man. — This 
is one of Cotton's " Remarkable Judgments of 
God, on Several Sorts of Offenders," — and the 
next cases referred to are the Judgments on the 
" Abominable Sacrilege " of not paying the Min- 
isters' Salaries. 

This sort of thing doesn't do here and now, 
you see, my young friend! We talk about our 
free institutions; — they are nothing but a coarse 
outside machinery to secure the freedom of in- 
dividual thought. The President of the United S 
States is only the engine-driver of our broad- 
gauge mail-train ; and every honest, independent 
thinker has a seat in the first-class cars behind 
him. 

There is something in wiiat you say, — 

replied the divinity-student; — and yet it seems to 
me there are places and times where disputed 
doctrines of religion should not be introduced. 
You would not attack a church dogma — say, 



146 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Total Depravity — in a lyceura-lecture, for in- 
stance ? 

Certainly not; I should choose another place, — 
I answered. — But, mind you, at this table I think 
it is very different. I shall express my ideas on 
any subject I like. The laws of the lecture-room, 
to which my friends and myself are always amen- 
able, do not hold here. I shall not often give 
arguments, but frequently opinions, — I trust with 
courtesy and propriety, but, at any rate, with such 
natural forms of expression as it has pleased the 
Almighty to bestow upon me. 

A man's opinions, look you, are generally of 
much more value than his arguments. These last 
are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not 
believe the proposition they tend to prove, — as is 
often the case with paid lawyers ; but opinions 
/are formed by our whole nature, — brain, heart, 
/ instinct, brute life, everything all our experience 
has shaped for us by contact with the whole cir- 
cle of our being. 

There is one thins: more, — said the divini- 



ty-student, — that I wished to speak of; I mean 
that idea of yours, expressed some time since, of 
depolarizing' the text of sacred books in order to 
judge them fairly. May I ask why you do not 
try the experiment yourself? 

Certainly, — I replied, — if it gives you any 
pleasure to ask foolish questions. I think the 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 147 

ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be 
laid, but I don't know that you have any right to 
ask me to go and lay it. But, for that matter, 1 
have heard a good deal of Scripture depolarized 
in and out of the pulpit. I heard the Rev. Mr. 
F once depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son 
in Park- Street Church. Many years afterwards, I 
heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized 
version in Rome, New York. I heard an admi- 
iable depolarization of the story of the young man 
who "had great possessions" from the Rev. Mr. 
H. in another pulpit, and felt that I had never 
half understood it before. All paraphrases are 
more or less perfect depolarizations. But I tell 
you this : the faith of our Christian community is 
not robust enough to bear the turning of our most 
sacred language into its depolarized equivalents. 
You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's 
famous Baltimore discourse and remember the 
shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, 
to satisfy yourself on this point Time, time only, 
can gradually wean us from our Epeolatry^ or 
word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the 
thing signified. Man is an idolater or symbol- 
worshipper by nature, which, of course, is no fault 
of his; but sooner or later all his local and tem- 
porary symbols must be ground to powder, like 
the golden calf, — word-images as well as metal 
and wooden ones. Rough work, iconoclasm, — but 



148 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the only way to get at truth. It is, indeed, as 
that quaint and rare old discourse, " A Summons 
for Sleepers," hath it, " no doubt a thankless 
office, and a verie unthriftie occupation ; ve?'itas 
odium parity truth never goeth without a scratcht 
face ; he that will be busie with vce vohis^ let him 
looke shortly for coram 7iobis.^^ 

The very aim and end of our institutions is 
just this : that we may think what we like and 
say what we think. 

Think what we like ! — said the divinity- 
student ; — think what we like I What ! against 
all human and divine authority ? 

Against all human versions of its own or any 
other authority. At our own peril always, if we do 
not like the right, — but not at the risk of being 
hanged and quartered for political heresy, or broiled 
on green fagots for ecclesiastical treason ! Nay, 
we have got so far, that the very word heresy 
has fallen into comparative disuse among us. 

And now, my young friend, let us shake hands 
and stop our discussion, which we will not make 
a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a great 
many things in your profession which we com- 
mon scholars do not know ; but mark this : when 
the common people of New England stop talking 
politics and theology, it will be because they have 
got an Emperor to teach them the one, and a 
Pope to teach them the other! 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 14S 

That was the end of my long conference with 
the divinity-stadent. The next morning we got 
talking a little on the same subject, very good- 
naturedly, as people return to a matter they have 
talked out. 

You must look to yourself, — said the divinity- 
student, — if your democratic notions get into 
print. You will be fired into from all quarters. 

If it were only a bullet, with the marksman's 
name on it! — I said. — I can't stop to pick out 
the peep-shot of the anonymous scribblers. 

Right, Sir! right ! — said the Little Gentleman. 
— The scamps ! I know the fellows. They can't 
give fifty cents to one of the Antipodes, but they 
must have it jingled along through everybody's 
palms all the way, till it reaches him, — and forty 
cents of it get spilt, like the water out of the fire- 
buckets passed along a "lane" at a fire; — but 
when it comes to anonymous defamation, putting 
lies into people's mouths, and then advertising 
those people through the country as the authors 
of them, — oh, then it is that they let not their 
left hand know what their right hand doeth! 

I don't like Ehud's style of doing business, Sir. 
He comes along with a very sanctimonious look. 
Sir, with his " secret errand unto thee," and his 
" message from God unto thee," and then pulls 
out his hidden knife with that unsuspected left 
hand of his, — (the Little Gentleman lifted his 



150 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

clenched left hand with the blood-red jewel on 
the ring-finger,) — and runs it, blade and haft, into 
a man's stomach! Don't meddle with these fel- 
lows, Sir. They are read mostly by persons whom 
you would not reach, if you were to write ever 
so much. Let 'em alone. A man whose opinions 
are not attacked is beneath contempt. 

I hope so, — I said. — I got three pamplilets 
and innumerable squibs flung at my head for at- 
tacking one of the pseudo-sciences, in former 
years. "When, by the permission of Providence, I 
held up to the professional public the damnable 
facts connected with the conveyance of poison 
from one young mother's chamber to another's, — 
for doing which humble office I desire to be 
thankful that I have lived, though nothing else 
good should ever come of my life, — I had to bear 
the sneers of those whose position I had assailed, 
and, as I believe, have at last demolished, so that 
nothing but the ghosts of dead women stir among 
the ruins. — What would you do, if the folks 
without names kept at you, trying to get a San 
Benito on to your shoulders that would fit you? 
— Would you stand still in fly-time, or would 
you give a kick now and then ? 

Let 'em bite I — said the Little Gentleman ; — 
let 'em bite! It makes 'em hungry to shake 'em 
off, and they settle down again as thick as ever 
and twice as savage. Do you know what med- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. loi 

dling with the folks without names, as you call 
'em, is like ? — It is like riding at the quintain. 
You run full tilt at the board, but the board is on 
a pivot, with a bag of sand on an arm that bal- 
ances it. The board gives way as soon as you 
touch it; and before you have got by, the bag of 
sand comes round whack on the back of your 
neck. "Ananias," for instance, pitches into your 
lecture, we will say, in some paper taken by 
the people in your kitchen. Your servants get 
saucy and negligent. If their newspaper calls 
you names, they need not be so particular about 
shutting doors softly or boiling potatoes. So you 
lose your temper, and come out in an article 
which you think is going to finish " Ananias," 
proving him a booby who doesn't know enough 
to understand even a lyceum-lecture, or else a 
person that tells lies. Now you think you've 
got him! Not so fast. " Ananias" keeps still 
and winks to " Shimei," and " Shimei " comes 
out in the paper which they take in your neigh- 
bor's kitchen, ten times worse than t'other fel- 
low. If you meddle with " Shimei," he steps 
out, and next week appears " Rab-shakeh," an 
unsavory wretch ; and now, at any rate, you find 
out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's 
»' Answer him not." — No, no, — keep your tem- 
per. — So saying, the Little Gentleman doubled his 
left fist and looked at it, as if he should like 



152 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

to hit something or somebody a most pernicious 
punch with it. 

Good! — said I. — Now let me give you some 
axioms 1 have arrived at, after seeing something 
of a great many kinds of good folks. 

Of a hundred people of each of the dif- 
ferent leading religious sects, about the same pro- 
portion will be safe and pleasant persons to deal 
and to live with. 

There are, at least, three real saints among 

the women to one among the men, in every de- 
nomination. 

The spiritual standard of different classes I 

would reckon thus : — 

1. The comfortably rich. 

2. The decently comfortable 

3. The very rich, who are apt to be irreligious. 

4. The very poor, who are apt to be immoral. 
The cut nails of machine-divinity may be 

driven in, but they won't clinch. 

The arguments which the greatest of our 

schoolmen could not refute were two : the blood 
in men's veins, and the milk in women's breasts. 

Humility is the first of the virtues — for 

other people. 

Faith always implies the disbelief of a 

lesser fact in favor of a greater. A little mind 
often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief, 
of a large one. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 153 

The Poor Relation had been fidgeting about 
and working her mouth while all this was going 
on. She broke out in speech at this point. 

I hate to hear folks talk so. I don't see that 
you are any better than a heathen. 

I wish I were half as good as many heathens 
have been, — I said. — Dying for a principle seems 
to me a higher degree of virtue than scolding for 
it; and the history of heathen races is full of in- 
stances where men have laid down their lives for 
the love of their kind, of their country, of truth, 
nay, even for simple manhood's sake, or to show 
their obedience or fidelity. What would not such 
beings have done for the souls of men, for the 
Christian commonwealth, for the King of Kings, 
if they had lived in days of larger light? Which 
seems to you nearest heaven, Socrates drinking 
his hemlock, Regulus going back to the enemy's 
camp, or that old New England divine sitting 
comfortably in his study and chuckling over his 
conceit of certain poor women, who had been 
burned to death in his own town, going "roaring 
out of one fire into another " ? 

I don't believe he said any such thing, — replied 
the Poor Relation. 

It is hard to believe, — said I, — but it is true 
for all that. In another hundred years it will be 
as incredible that men talked as we sometimea 
hear them now. 

7* 



154 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Pectus est quod facit theohgntn. The heart 
makes the theologian. Every race, every civiliza- 
tion, either has a new revelation of its own or a 
new interpretation of an old one. Democratic 
America has a different humanity from feudal 
Europe, and so must have a new divinity. See, 
for one moment, how intelligence reacts on our 
faiths. The Bible was a divining-book to our an- 
cestors, and is so still in the hands of some of 
the vulgar. The Puritans went to the Old Testa- 
ment for their laws; the Mormons go to it for 
their patriarchal institution. Every generation dis- 
solves something new and precipitates something 
once held in solution from that great storehouse 
of temporary and permanent truths. 

You may observe this: that the conversation of 
intelligent men of the stricter sects is strangely in 
advance of the formulas that belong to their organ- 
izations. So true is this, that I have doubts 
whether a large proportion of them would not 
have been rather pleased than offended, if they 
could have overheard our talk. For, look you, I 
think there is hardly a professional teacher who 
will not in private conversation allow a large part 
of what we have said, though it may frighten him 
in print; and I know well what an under-current 
of secret sympathy gives vitality to those poor 
words of mine which sometimes get a hearing. 

I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 155 

who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles 
a bottle, and burns, according to his own prem- 
ises, a dozen souls a year in the cigars with which 
he muddles his brains. But as for the good and 
true and intelligent men whom we see all around 
us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful, — men 
who know that the active mind of the century is 
tending more and more to the two poles, Rome 
and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, 
authority or personality, God in us or God in our 
masters, and that, though a man may by accident 
stand half-way between these two points, he must 
look one way or the other, — I don't believe they 
would take offence at anything I have reported of 
our late conversation. 

But supposing any one do take offence at first 
sight, let him look over these notes again, and see 
whether he is quite sure he does not agree with 
most of these things that were said amongst us. 
If he agrees with most of them, let him be pa- 
tient with an opinion he does not accept, or an 
expression or illustration a little too vivacious. I 
don't know that I shall report any more conver- 
sations on these topics ; but I do insist on the 
right to express a civil opinion on this class of 
subjects without giving offence, just when and 
where I please, — unless, as in the lecture-room, 
there is an implied contract to keep clear of 
doubtful matters. You didn't think a man could 



156 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sifc at a breakfast-table doing nothing but making 
puns every morning for a year or two, and never 
give a thought to the two thousand of his fellow- 
creatures who are passing into another state dur- 
ing every hour that he sits talking and laughing! 
Of course, the one matter that a real human being 
cares for is what is going to become of them and 
of him. And the plain truth is, that a good many 
people are saying one thing about it and believing 
another. 

How do I know that ? Why, I have 

known and loved to talk with good people, all the 
way from Rome to Geneva in doctrine, as long 
as I can remember. Besides, the real religion of 
the world comes from women much more than 
from men, — from mothers most of all, who carry 
the key of our souls in their bosoms. It is in 
their hearts that the " sentimental " religion some 
people are so fond of sneering at has its source. 
The sentiment of love, the sentiment of maternity, 
the sentiment of the paramount obligation of the 
parent to the child as having called it into exist- 
ence, enhanced just in proportion to the power 
and knowledge of the one and the weakness and 
ignorance of the other, — these are the " senti- 
ments " that have kept our soulless systems from 
driving men off to die in holes like those that 
riddle the sides of the hill opposite the Monastery 
of St. Saba, where the miserable victims of a 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 157 

falsely-interpreted religion starved and withered in 
their delusion. 

I have looked on the face of a saintly woman 
this very day, whose creed many dread and hate 
but whose life is lovely and noble beyond all 
praise. When I remember the bitter words I have 
heard spoken against her faith, by men who have 
an Inquisition which excommunicates those who 
ask to leave their communion in peace, and an 
Index Expurgatorius on which this article may 
possibly have the honor of figuring, — and, far 
w^orse than these, the reluctant, pharisaical con- 
fession, that it might perhaps be possible that 
one who so believed should -be accepted of the 
Creator, — and then recall the sweet peace and 
love that show through all her looks, the price of 
untold sacrifices and labors, — and again recollect 
how thousands of women, filled with the same 
spirit, die, without a murmur, to earthly life, die 
to their own names even, that they may know 
nothing but their holy duties, — while men are tor- 
turing and denouncing their fellows, and while we 
can hear day and night the clinking of the ham- 
mers that are trying, like the brute forces in the 
" Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges 
right through the breast of human nature, — I 
have been ready to believe that we have even 
now a new revelation, and the name of its Mes- 
siah is Woman ! 



158 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



I should ba sorry, — I remarked, a day or 



two afterwards, to the divinity-student, — if any- 
thing I said tended in any way to foster any 
jealousy between the professions, or to throw dis« 
respect upon that one on whose counsel and sym 
pathies almost all of us lean in our moments of 
trial. But we are false to our new conditions of 
life, if we do not resolutely maintain our religious 
as well as our political freedom, in the face of 
any and all supposed monopolies. Certain men 
will, of course, say two things, if we do not take 
their views : first, that we don't know anything 
. about these matters; and, secondly, that we are 
not so good as they are. They have a polarized 
phraseology for saying these things, but it comes 
to precisely that. To which it may be answered, 
in the first place, that we have good authority for 
saying that even babes and sucklings know some- 
thing ; and, in the second, that, if there is a mote 
^^or so to be removed from our premises, the courts 
\ and councils of the last few years have found 
)^beams enough in some other quarters to build a 
^ church that would hold all the good people in 
/Boston and have sticks enough left to make a 
^bonfire for all the heretics. 

As to that terrible depolarizing process of mine, 
of which we were talking the other day, I will 
give you a specimen of one way of managing it, 
if you like. I don't believe it will hurt you or 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159 

anybody. Besides, I had a great ^al rather finish 
oar talk with pleasant images and gentle words 
than with sharp sayings, which will only afford a 
text, if anybody repeats them, for endless relays 
of attacks from Messrs. Ananias, Shimei, and 
Rab-shakeh. 

[I must leave such gentry, if any of them show 
themselves, in the hands of my clerical friends, 
many of whom are ready to stand up for the 
rights of the laity, — and to those blessed souls, 
the good women, to whom this version of the 
story of a mother's hidden hopes and tender anxi- 
eties is dedicated by their peaceful and loving ser- 
vant.! 



. A MOTHER'S SECRET. 

How sweet the sacred legend— if unblamed 
In my slight verse such holy things are named — 
Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy, 
Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy ! 
Ace, Maria ! Pardon, if I wrong 
Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song! 

The choral host had closed the angel's strain 
Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem's plain; 
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way, 
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay. 
They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er,— 
They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor 



160 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

"Where Moab's •daughter, homeless and forlorn, 
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn ; 
And some remembered how the holy scribe, 
Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe, 
Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son 
To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won. 
So fared they on to seek the promised sign 
That marked the anointed heir of David's line. 

At last, by forms of earthly semblance led, 
They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed. 
No pomp was there, no glory shone around 
On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground; 
One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed, — 
In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid ! 

The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale 
Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale ; 
Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed ; 
ToU how the shining multitude proclaimed 
" Joy, joy to earth ! Behold the hallowed morn I 
In David's city Christ the Lord is born ! ' 

* Glory to God ! ' let angels shout on high, — 

* Good- will to men ! ' the listening Earth reply ! " 

They spoke with hurried words and accents wild; 
Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child. 
No trembling word the mother's joy revealed, — 
One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed ; 
Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart, 
But kept their words to ponder in her heart. 

Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall, 
Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. 
The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill 
Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill, — 
' The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 161 

Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son. 
No voice had reached the Galilean vale 
Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale ; 
In the meek, studious child they only saw 
The future Kabbi, learned in Israel's law. 

So grew the boy; and now the feast was near, 
When at the holy place the tribes appear. 
Scarce had the home-bred child of Nazareth seen 
Beyond the hills that girt the village-green. 
Save when at midnight, o'er the star-lit sands. 
Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands, 
A babe, close-folded to his mother's breast. 
Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West. 

Then Joseph spake : " Thy boy hath largely grown 
Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown ; 
Fair robes beseem tho pilgrim, as the priest : 
Goes he not with us to the holy feast ? " 

And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white; 
Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light; 
The thread was twined; its parting meshes through 
From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew, 
Till the full web was wound upon the beam, — 
Love's curious toil, — a vest without a seam! 

They reach the holy place, fulfil the days 
To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise. 
At last they turn, and far Moriah's height 
Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight. 
All day the dusky caravan has flowed 
In devious trails along tho Avinding road, — 
(For many a step their homeward path attends, 
And all the sons of Abraham are as friends). 
Evening has come, — the hour of rest and joy ; — 
Hush! hush!— that whisper, —" Where is Mary's boy? 

O weary hour! aching days that passed 



162 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

j 

Filled with strange fears, eaili wilder than the last: ' 

The soldier's lance, — the fierce centurion's sword, — i 

I 

The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord, — '| 

The midnight crypt that sucks the captive's breath,— | 

The blistering sun on HInnom's vale of death ! ' 

Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light, j 

Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night, I 

Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth, ' 

Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth. i 

At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more 

The Temple's porches, searched in vain before ; i 

They found him seated with the ancient men, — > j 

The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen, — • 

Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near, i 

Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear, • 

Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise i 

That lips so fresh should utter words so wise. : 

And Mary said, — as one who, tried too long, 1 

Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong, — I 

" What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done ? j 

Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son ! " ! 

Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone, — : 
Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown; 
Then turned with them and left the holy hill. 
To all their mild commands obedient still. 

The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men. 

And Nazareth's matrons told it oft a^i^ain : '' 

The maids retold it at the fountain's side; ' 
The youthful shepherds doubted or denied ; 
It passed around among the listening friends. 
With all that fancy adds and fiction lends, 
Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown 

Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down. j 

But Mary, faithful to its lightest word, I 

i 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 163 

Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard. 
Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil, 
And shuddering Earth confirmed the Avondrous tale. 

Youth fades ; love droops ; the leaves of friendship fall ; 
A mother's secret hope outlives them all. 



VI. 



You don't look so dreac^ul poor in the face as 
you did a while back. Bloated some, I expect. 

This was the cheerful and encouraging and ele- 
gant remark with which the Poor Relation greeted 
the divinity-student one morning. 

Of course every good man considers it a great 
sacrifice on his part to continue living in this 
transitory, unsatisfactory, and particularly unpleas- 
ant world. This is so much a matter of course, 
that I was surprised to see the divinity-student 
change color. He took a look at a small and un- 
certain-minded glass which hung slanting forward 
over the chapped sideboard. The image it re- 
turned to him had the color of a very young pea 
somewhat over-boiled. The scenery of a long 
tragic drama flashed through his mind as the 
lightning-express-train whishes by a station : the 
gradual dismantling process of disease ; friends 
looking on, sympathetic, but secretly chuckling 



164 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

over their own stomachs of iron and lungs of 
caoutchouc ; nurses attentive, but calculating theii 
crop, and thinking how soon it will be ripe, so 
that they can go to your neighbor, who is good 
for a year or so longer ; doctors assiduous, but 
giving themselves a mental shake, as they go out 
of your door, which throws oft' your particular 
grief as a duck sheds a raindrop from his oily 
feathers ; undertakers solemn, but happy ; then the 
great subsoil cultivator, who plants, but never 
looks for fruit in his garden ; then the stone-cut- 
ter, who finds the lie that has been waiting for 
you on a slab ever since the birds or beasts made 
their tracks on the new red sandstone ; then the 
grass and the dandelions and the buttercups,— 
Earth saying to the mortal body, with her sweet 
symbolism, " You have scarred my bosom, but 
you are forgiven " ; then a glimpse of the soul as 
a floating consciousness without very definite form 
or place, but dimly conceived of as an upright 
column of vapor or mist several times larger than 
life-size, so far as it could be said to have any 
size at all, wandering about and living a thin and 
half-awake life for want of good old-fashioned 
solid matter to come down upon with foot and 
fist, — in fact, having neither foot nor fist, nor 
conveniences for taking the sitting posture. 

And yet the divinity-student was a good Chris- 
tian, and those heathen images which remind one 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 165 

of the cliilcllike fancies of the dying Adrian were 
only the efforts of his imagination to give shape to 
the formless and position to the placeless. Neither 
did his thoughts spread themselves out and link 
themselves as I have displayed them. They came 
confusedly into his mind like a heap of broken 
mosaic?, — sometimes a part of the picture com- 
plete in itself, sometimes connected fragments, and 
sometimes only single severed stones. 

They did not diffuse a light of celestial joy 
over his countenance. On the contrary, the Poor 
Relation's remark turned him pale, as I have 
said; and when the terrible wrinkled and jaun- 
diced looking-glass turned him green in addition, 
and he saw himself in it, it seemed to him as if 
it were all settled, and his book of life were to 
be shut not yet half-read, and go back to the dust 
of the under-ground archives. He coughed a mild 
short cough, as if to point the direction in which 
his downward path was tending. It was an hon- 
est little cough enough, so far as appearances went. 
But coughs are ungrateful things. You find one 
out in the cold, take it up and nurse it and make 
everything of it, dress it up warm, give it all sorts 
of balsams and other food it likes, and carry it 
round in your bosom as if it were a miniature 
lapdog. And by-and-by its little bark grows sharp 
and savage, and — confound the thing! — you find 
it is a wolfs whelp that you have got there, and 



166 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

he is gnawing in the breast where he has been 
nestling so long. — The Poor P^elation said that 
somebody's surrup was good for folks that were 
gettin' into a bad w^ay. — The landlady had heard 
of desperate cases cured by cherry-pictorial. 

"Whiskey's the fellah, — said the young man 
John. — Make it into punch, cold at dinner-time 
'n' hot at bed-time. I'll come up 'n' show you 
how to mix it. Haven't any of you seen the 
wonderful fat man exhibitin', down in Hanover 
Street ? 

Master Benjamin Franklin rushed into the dia- 
logue with a breezy exclamation, that he had seen 
a great picter outside of the place where the fat 
man was exhibitin'. Tried to get in at half-price, 
but the man at the door looked at his teeth and 
said he was more'n ten year old. 

It isn't two years, — said the young man John, 
— since that fat fellah was exhibitin' here as the 
Livin' Skeleton. Whiskey — that's what did it, — 
real Burbon's the stuff. Hot water, sugar, 'n' jest 
a little shavin' of lemon-skin in it, — skin, mind * 
you, none o' your juice; take it off thin, — shape 
of one of them flat curls the factory-girls wear on 
the sides of their foreheads. 

But I am a teetotaller, — said the divinity-student, 
in a subdued tone ; — not noticing the enormous 
length of the bow-string the young fellow had just 
drawn. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 1G7 

He took up his hat and went out. 

I think you have worried that young man more 
than you meant, — I said. — I don't believe he 
will jump off one of the bridges, for he has too 
much principle ; but I mean to follow him and 
see where he goes, for he looks as if his nJnd 
were made up to something. 

I followed him at a reasonable distance. He 
walked doggedly along, looking neither to the right 
nor the left, turned into State Street, and made 
for a well-known Life-Insurance Office. Luckily, 
the doctor was there and overhauled him on the 
spot. There was nothing the matter with him, he 
said, and he could have his life insured as a sound 
one. He came out in good spirits, and told me 
this soon after. 

This led me to make some remarks the next 
morning on the manners of well-bred and ill-bred 
people. 

I began, — The whole essence of true gentle- 
breeding (one does not like to say gentility) lies 
in the wish and the art to be agreeable. Good- 
breeding is surface- Christianity, Every look, move- 
ment, tone, expression, subject of discourse, that 
may give pain to another is habitually excluded 
from conversational intercourse. This is the reason 
why rich people are apt to be so much more 
agreeable than others. 



16$ THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



I thought you were a great champion of 



equality, — said the discreet and severe lad}'- who 
had accompanied our young friend, the Latin Tu- 
tor's daughter. 

I go politically for equality, — I said, — and 
socially for the quality. 

Who are the "quality," — said the Model, etc., 
^ in a community like ours ? 

I confess I find this question a little difficult to 
answer, — I said. — Nothing is better known than 
the distinction of social ranks which exists in 
every community, and nothing is harder to define. 
The great gentlemen and ladies of a place are its 
real lords and masters and mistresses; they are 
the quality^ whether in a monarchy or a republic ; 
mayors and governors and generals and senators 
and ex-presidents are nothing to them. How^ well 
we know this, and how seldom it finds a distinct 
expression ! Now I tell you truly, 1 believe in 
man as man, and I disbelieve in all distinctions 
except such as follow the natural lines of cleavage 
in a society w^hich has crystallized according to its 
own true laws. But the essence of equality is to 
be able to say the truth ; and there is nothing 
more curious than these truths relating to the 
stratification of society. 

Of all the facts in this world that do not take 
hold of immortality, there is not one so intensely 
real, permanent, and engrossing as this of social 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 169 

position, — as you see by the circumstance that 
the core of all the great social orders the world 
has seen has been, and is still, for the most part, 
a privileged class of gentlemen and ladies arranged 
in a regular scale of precedence among themselves, 
but superior as a body to all else. 

Nothing but an ideal Christian equality, which 
we have been getting farther away from since the 
days of the Primitive Church, can prevent this 
subdivision of society into classes from taking 
place everywhere, — in the great centres of our 
republic as much as in old European monarchies. 
Only there position is more absolutely hereditary, 
— here it is more completely elective. 

Where is the election held ? and what are 

the qualifications ? and who are the electors ? — 
said the Model. 

Nobody ever sees when the vote is taken ; there 
never is a formal vote. The women settle it 
mostly; and they know wonderfully well what is 
presentable, and what can't stand the blaze of the 
chandeliers and the critical eye and ear of people 
trained to know a staring shade in a ribbon, a 
false light in a jewel, an ill-bred tone, an angular 
movement, everything that betrays a coarse fibre 
and cheap training. As a general thing, you do 
not get elegance short of two or three removes 
from the soil, out of which our best blood doubt- 
less comes, — quite as good, no doubt, as if it 



170 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

came from those old prize-fighters with iron pots 
on their heads, to whom some great people are so 
fond of tracing their descent through a line of 
small artisans and petty shopkeepers whose veins 
have held "base" fluid enough to fill the Cloaca 
Maxima ! 

Does not money go everywhere ? — said the 
Model. 

Almost. And with good reason. For though 
there are numerous exceptions, rich people are, as 
I said, commonly altogether the most agreeable 
companions. The influence of a fine house, grace- 
ful furniture, good libraries, well-ordered tables, 
trim servants, and, above all, a position so secure 
that one becomes unconscious of it, gives a har- 
mony and refinement to the character and man- 
ners which we feel, even if we cannot explain 
their charm. Yet we can get at the reason of it 
by thinking a little. 

All these appliances are to shield the sensibility 
from disagreeable contacts, and to soothe it by 
varied natural and artificial influences. In this 
way the mind, the taste, the feelings, grow deli- 
cate, just as the hands grow white and soft when 
saved from toil and incased in soft gloves. The 
whole nature becomes subdued into suavity. I 
confess I like the quality-ladies better than the 
common kind even of literary ones. They haven^t 
read the last book, perhaps, but they attend better 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171 

to you when you are talking to them. If they 
are never learned, they make up for it in tact and 
elegance. Besides, I think, on the whole, there is 
less self-assertion in diamonds than in dogmas. I 
don't know where you will find a sweeter portrait 
of humility than in Esther, the poor play-girl of 
King Ahasuerus; yet Esther put on her royal 
apparel when she went before her lord. I have 
no doubt she was a more gracious and agreeable 
person than Deborah, who judged the people and 
wrote the story of Sisera. The wisest woman you 
talk with is ignorant of something that you know, 
but an elegant w^oman never forgets her elegance. 
Dowdyism is clearly an expression of imperfect 
vitality. The highest fashion is intensely alive, — 
not alive necessarily to the truest and best things, 
but with its blood tingling, as it were, in all its 
extremities and to the farthest point of its surface, 
so that the feather in its bonnet is as fresh as the 
crest of a fighting-cock, and the rosette on its 
slipper as clean-cut and pimpant (pronounce it 
English fashion, — it is a good word) as a dahlia. 
As a general rule, that society where flattery is 
acted is much more agreeable than that where it 
is spoken. Don't you see why? Attention and 
deference don't require you to make fine speeches 
expressing your sense of unworthiness (lies) and 
returning all the compliments paid you. This is 
one reason. 



172 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

A woman of sense ought to be above flat- 



tering any man, — said the Model. 

[Ml/ reflection. Oh ! oh ! no wonder you didn't 
get married. Served you right.] My remark. 
Surely, Madam, — if you mean by flattery telling 
people boldly to their faces that they are this or 
that, which they are not. But a woman who 
does not carry a halo of good feeling and de- 
sire to make everybody contented about with her 
wherever she goes, — an atmosphere of grace, 
mercy, and peace, of at least six feet radius, 
which wraps every human being upon whom she 
voluntarily bestows her presence, and so flatters 
him with the comfortable thought that she is 
rather glad he is alive than otherwise, isn't worth 
the trouble of talking to, as a woman; she may do 
well enough to hold discussions with. 

1 don't think the Model exactly liked this. 

She said, — a little spitefully, I thought, — that a 
sensible man might stand a little praise, but would 
of course soon get sick of it, if he were in the 
habit of getting much. 

Oh, yes, — I replied, — just as men get sick of 
tobacco. It is notorious how apt they are to get 
tired of that vegetable. 

That's so! — said the young fellow John. 

— I've got tired of my cigars and burnt 'em all 
up. 

I am heartily glad to hear it, — said the Model. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 173 

— 'I wish they were all disposed of in the same 
way. 

So do I, — said the young fellow John. 

Can'i you get your friends to unite with you 
in committing those odious instruments of de- 
bauchery to the flames in which you have con- 
sumed your own ? 

I wish I could, — said the young fellow John. 

It would be a noble sacrifice, — said the Model, 
— and every American woman would be grateful 
to you. Let us burn them all in a heap out in 
the yard. 

That a'n't my way, — said the young fellow 
John ; — I burn 'em one 't' time, — little end in 
my mouth and big end outside. 

1 watched for the effect of this sudden 

change of programme, when it should reach the 
calm stillness of the Model's interior apprehension, 
as a boy watches for the splash of a stone which 
he has dropped into a well. But before it had 
fairly reached the water, poor Iris, who had fol- 
lowed the conversation with a certain interest 
until it turned this sharp corner, (for she seems 
rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed 
out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all 
off, as the locust-cry of some full-throated soprano 
drags a multitudinous chorus after it. It was 
Dlain that some dam or other had broken in the 
Boul of this young girl, and she was squaring up 



174 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

old scores of laughter, out of which she had been 
cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that 
swept all before it. So we had a great laugh all 
round, in which the Model — who, if she had as 
many virtues as there are spokes to a wheel, all 
compacted with a personality as round and com- 
plete as its tire, yet wanted that one little addi- 
tion of grace, which seems so small, and is as 
important as the linch-pin in trundling over the 
rough ways of life — had not the tact to join. 
She seemed to be " stuffy " about it, as the young 
fellow John said. In fact, I was afraid the joke 
would have cost us both our new lady-boarders. 
It had no effect, however, except, perhaps, to 
hasten the departure of the elder of the two, who 
could, on the whole, be spared. 

1 had meant to make this note of our con- 
versation a text for a few axioms on the matter 
of breeding. But it so happened, that, exactly at 
this point of my record, a very distinguished 
philosopher, whom several of our boarders and 
myself go to hear, and whom no doubt many of 
my readers follow habitually, treated this matter 
of manners. Up to this point, if I have been so 
fortunate as to coincide with him in opinion, and 
so unfortunate as to try to express what he has 
more felicitously said, nobody is to blame; for 
what has been given thus far was all written be- 
fore the lecture was delivered. But what shall I 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175 

do now? He told us it was childish to lay down 
rules for deportment, — but he could not help lay- 
ing down a few. 

Thus, — Nothing so vulgar as to be in a hurry, 

— True, but hard of application. People with 
short legs step quickly, because legs are pendulums, 
and swing more times in a minute the shorter 
they are. Generally a natural rhythm runs through 
the whole organization : quick pulse, fast breath- 
ing, hasty speech, rapid trains of thought, excit- 
able temper. Stillness of person and steadiness of 
features are signal marks of good-breeding. Vul- 
gar persons can't sit still, or, at least, they must 
work their limbs or features. 

Talking of one's own ails and grievances. — Bad 
enough, but not so bad as insulting the person 
you talk with by remarking on his ill-looks, or ap- 
pearing to notice any of his personal peculiarities. 
Apologizing. — A very desperate habit, — one 
that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism 
wrong side out. Nine times out of ten, the first 
thing a man's companion knows of his shortcom- 
ing is from his apology. It is mighty presumptu- 
ous on your part to suppose yom* small failures 
of so much consequence that you must make a 
talk about them. 

\ Good dressing, quiet ways, low tones of voice, 
lips that can wait, and eyes that do not wander, 

— shyness of personalities, except in certain inti- 



176 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

mate communions, — to be light in hand in con- 
versation, to have ideas, but to be able to make 
talk, if necessary, without them, — to belong to 
the company you are in, and not to yourself, — to 
have nothing in your di'ess or furniture so fine 
that you cannot afford to spoil it and get another 
like it, yet to preserve the harmonies throughout 
your person and dwelling: I should say that this 
was a fair capital of manners to begin with/\ 

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies 
very commonly an overestimate of our special in- 
dividuality, as distinguished from our generic hu- 
manity. It is just here that the very highest 
society asserts its superior breeding. Among truly 
elegant people of the highest ton^ you will find 
more real equality in social intercourse than in a 
country vUlage. As nuns drop their birth-names 
and become Sister Margaret and Sister Mary, so 
high-bred people drop their personal distinctions 
and become brothers and sisters of conversational 
charity. Nor are fashionable people without their 
heroism. I believe there are men who have shown 
as much self-devotion in carrying a lone wall- 
flower down to the supper-table as ever saint or 
martyr in the act that has canonized his name. 
There are Florence Nightingales of the ballroom, 
whom nothing can hold back from their errands 
of mercy. They find out the red-handed, glove- 
less undergraduate of bucolic antecedents, as he 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 177 

squirms in his corner, and distil their soft words 
upon him like dew upon the green herb. They 
reach even the poor relation, whose dreary appari- 
tion saddens the perfumed atmosphere of the 
sumptuous drawing-room. I have known one of 
these angels ask, of her own accord^ that a deso- 
late middle-aged man, whom nobody seemed to 
know, should be presented to her by the hostess. 
He wore no shirt-collar, — he had on black gloves, 
— and was flourishing a red bandanna handker- 
chief! Match me this, ye proud children of pov- 
erty, who boast of your paltry sacrifices for each 
other ! Virtue in humble life ! What is that to 
the glorious self-renunciation of a martyr in pearls 
and diamonds? As I saw this noble woman 
bending gracefully before the social mendicant, — 
the white billows of her beauty heaving under the 
foam of the traitorous laces that half revealed 
them, — I should have wept with sympathetic 
emotion, but that tears, except as a private dem- 
onstration, are an ill-disguised expression of self- 
consciousness and vanity, which is inadmissible in 
good society. 

I have sometimes thought, with a pang, of the 
position in which political chance or contrivance 
might hereafter place some one of our fellow- 
citizens. It has happened hitherto, so far as my 
limited knowledge goes, that the President of the 
United States has always been what might be 



178 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

called in general terms a gentleman. But what 
if at some future time the choice of the people 
should fall upon one on whom that lofty title 
could not, by any stretch of charity, be bestowed? 
This may happen, — how soon the future only 
knows. Think of this miserable man of com- 
ing political possibilities, — an unpresentable boor, 
sucked into office by one of those eddies in the 
flow of popular sentiment which carry straws and 
chips into the public harbor, while the prostrate 
trunks of the monarchs of the forest hurry down 
on the senseless stream to the gulf of political 
oblivion! Think of him, I say, and of the con- 
centrated gaze of good society through its thou- 
sand eyes, all confluent, as it were, in one great 
burning-glass of ice that shrivels its wretched ob- 
ject in fiery torture, itself cold as the glacier of 
an unsunned cavern ! No, — there will be angels 
of good-breeding then as now, to shield the vic- 
tim of free institutions from himself and from his 
torturers. I can fancy a lovely woman playfully 
withdrawing the knife which he would abuse by 
making it an instrument for the conveyance of 
food, — or, failing in this kind artifice, sacrificing 
herself by imitating his use of that implement; 
how much harder than to plunge it into her 
bosom, like Lucretia! I can see her studying his 
provincial dialect until she becomes the Cham- 
pollion of New England or Western or Southern 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 179 

barbarisms. She has learned that hdow means 
what; that thinkin^ is the same thing as thinking; 
or she has found out the meaning of that extraor- 
dinary monosyllable, which no single-tongued pho- 
nographer can make legible, prevailing on the 
banks of the Hudson and at its embouchure, and 
elsewhere, — what they say when they think they 
S3,j first, (fe-eest, — fe as in the French Ze), — or 
that cheer means chair, — or that urritalion means 
irritation, — and so of other enormities. Nothing 
surprises her. The highest breeding, you know, 
comes round to the Indian standard, — to take 
everything coolly, — nil admirari, — if you happen 
to be learned and like the Roman phrase for the 
same thing. 

If you like the " company of people that stare at 
you from head to foot to see if there is a hole in 
your coat, or if you have not grown a little older, 
or if your eyes are not yellow with jaundice, or 
if your complexion is not a little faded, and so 
on, and then convey the fact to you, in the style 
in which the Poor Relation addressed the divinity- 
student, — go with them as much as yon like. I 
hate the sight of the wretches. Don't for mercy's 
sake think I hate them ; the distinction is one my 
friend or I drew long ago. No matter where you 
find such people ; they are clowns. The rich 
woman who looks and talks in this way is not 
half so much a lady as her Irish servant, whose 



180 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

pretty " saving your presence," when she has to 
say something which offends her natural sense of 
good manners, has a hint in it of the breeding of 
courts, and the blood of old Milesian kings, which 
very likely runs in her veins, — thinned by two 
hundred years of potato, which, being an under- 
ground fruit, tends to drag down the generations 
that are made of it to the earth from which it 
came, and, filling their veins with starch, turn 
them into a kind of human vegetable. , 

I say, if you like such people, go with them. 
But I am going to make a practical application 
of the example at the beginning of this particular 
record, which some young people who are going 
to choose professional advisers by-and-by may re- 
member and thank me for. If you are making 
choice of a physician, be sure you get one, if pos- 
sible, with a cheerful and serene countenance. A 
physician is not — at least, ought not to be — an 
executioner; and a sentence of death on his face 
is as bad as a warrant for execution signed by 
the Governor. As a general rule, no man has a 
right to tell another by word or look that he is 
going to die. It may be necessary in some ex- 
treme cases; but as a rule, it is the last extreme 
of impertinence which one human being can offer 
to another. " You have killed me," said a patient 
once to a physician who had rashly told him he 
was incurable. He ought to have lived six 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 181 

months, but he was dead in six weeks. If we 
will only let Nature and the God of Nature 
alone, persons will commonly learn their condition 
as early as they ought to know it, and not be 
cheated out of their natural birthright of hope of 
recovery, which is intended to accompany sick 
people as long as life is comfortable, and is gra- 
ciously replaced by the hope of heaven, or at 
least of rest, when life has become a burden 
which the bearer is ready to let fall. 

Underbred people tease their sick and dying 
friends to death. The chance of a gentleman or 
lady with a given mortal ailment to live a certain 
time is as good again as that of the common sort 
of coarse people. As you go down the social 
scale, you reach a point at length where the com- 
mon talk in sick rooms is of churchyards and 
sepulchres, and a kind of perpetual vivisection is 
forever carried on, upon the person of the miser- 
able sufferer. 

And so, in choosing your clergyman, other 
things being equal, prefer the one of a wholesome 
and cheerful habit of mind and body. If you can 
get along with people who carry a certificate in 
their faces that their goodness is so great as to 
make them very miserable, your children cannot. 
And whatever offends one of these little ones can- 
not be right in the eyes of Him who loved them 
BO well. 



182 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

After all, as you are a gentleman or a lady, 
you will probably select gentlemen for your bodily 
and spiritual advisers, and then all will be right. 

This repetition of the above words, — gentle- 
man and lady^ — which could not be conveniently 
avoided, reminds me what strange uses are made 
of them by those who ought to know what they 
mean. Thus, at a marriage ceremony, once, of 
two very excellent persons who had been at ser- 
vice, instead of, Do you take this man, etc. ? and. 
Do you take this woman ? how do you think the 
officiating clergyman put the questions? It was, 
Do you. Miss So and So, take this Gentleman ? 
and. Do you, Mr. This or That, take this Lady ? ! 
What would any English duchess, ay, or the 
Queen of England herself, have thought, if the 
Archbishop of Canterbury had called her and her 
bridegroom anything but plain woman and man 
at such a time? 

I don't doubt the Poor Relation thought it 
was all very fine, if she happened to be in the 
church; but if the worthy man who uttered these 
monstrous words — monstrous in such a connec- 
tion — had known the ludicrous surprise, the con- 
vulsion of inward disgust and contempt, that 
seized upon many of the persons who were pres- 
ent, — had guessed what a sudden flash of light 
it threw on the Dutch gilding, the pinchbeck, the 
shabby, perking pretension belonging to certain 



THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 183 

social layers, — so inherent in their whole mode of 
being, that the holiest offices of religion cannot 
exclude its impertinences, — the good man would 
have given his marriage-fee twice over to recall 
that superb and full-blown vulgarism. Any per- 
sons whom it could please could have no better 
notion of what the words referred to signify than 
of the meaning of apsides and asymptotes. 

Man! Sir! Woman! Sir! Gentility is a fine 
thing, not to be undervalued, as I have been try- 
ing to explain; but humanity comes before that. 

"When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman?" 

The beauty of that plainness of speech and man- 
ners which comes from the finest training is not 
to be understood by those whose habitat is below 
a certain level. Just as the exquisite sea-anemones 
and all the graceful ocean-flowers die out at some 
fathoms below the surface, the elegances and suavi- 
ties of life die out one by one as we sink through 
the social scale. Fortunately, the virtues are more 
tenacious of life, and last pretty well until we get 
down to the mud of absolute pauperism, where 
they do not flourish greatly. 

I had almost forgotten about our boarders. 

As the Model of all the Virtues is about to leave 
us, I find myself wondering what is the reason we 
are not aU very sorry. Surely we aU like good 



184 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

persons. She is a good person. Therefore we 
like her. — Only we don't. 

This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, in- 
volving the principle which some English convey- 
ancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied 
in the lines by which Dr. Fell is made unamiably 
immortal, — this syllogism, I say, is one that most 
persons have had occasion to construct and de- 
molish, respecting somebody or other, as I have 
done for the Model. " Pious and painefulL" Why 
has that excellent old phrase gone out of use? 
Simply because these good painefull or painstak- 
ing persons proved to be such nuisances in the 
long run, that the Word "painefull" came, before 
people thought of it, to mean paingiving' instead 
of painstaking. 

So, the old fellah's off to-morrah, — said 

the young man John. 

Old fellow ? — - said I, — whom do you mean ? 

Why, the one that came with our little beauty, 
— the old fellah in petticoats. 

Now that means something, — said I to 

myself. — These rough young rascals very often 
hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with 
; their eyes shut. A real woman does a great many 
I things without knowing why she does them ; but 
these pattern machines mix up their intellects with 
everything they do, just like men. They can't 
help it, no doubt; but we can't help getting sick 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE EREAKF AST-TABLE. 185 

of them, either. Intellect. is to a woman's nature 
what her watch-spring skirt is to her dress; i< 
ought to underlie her silks and embroideries, but 
not to show itself too staringl-y on the outside. — 
You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you;-— 
the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, 
and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from 
the brain carries the hue of the place it came 
from, and whatever comes from the heart carries 
the heat and color of its birthplace. 

The young man John did not hear my soliloqiie, 
of course, but sent up one more bubble from our 
sinking conversation, in the form of a statement, 
that she was at liberty to go to a personage who 
receives no visits, as is commonly supposed, from 
virtuous people. 

Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a 
person who never did anybody any wrong, but, 
on the contrary, is an estimable and intelligent, 
nay, a particularly enlightened and . exemplary 
member of society, fail to inspire interest, love, 
and devotion ? Because of the reversed current in 
the flow of thought and emotion. The red heart 
sends all its instincts up to the white brain to be 
analyzed, chilled, blanched, and so become pure 
reason, which is just exactly what we do not 
want of woman as woman. The current should 
run the other way. The nice, calm, cold thought, 
w^hich in women shapes itself so rapidly that they 



186 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

hardly know it as thought, should always tra\el 
to the lips via the heart. It does so in those 
women whom all love and admire. It travels the 
wrong way in the. Model. That is the reason 
why the Little Gentleman said, " I hate her, I 
hate her." That is the reason why the young 
man John called her the " old fellah," and banished 
her to the company of the great Unpresentable. 
That is the reason why I, the Professor, am pick- 
ing her to pieces with scalpel and forceps. That 
is the reason why the young girl whom she has 
befriended repays her kindness with gratitude and 
respect, rather than with the devotion and pas- 
sionate fondness which lie sleeping beneath the 
calmness of her amber eyes. I can see her, as 
she sits between this estimable and most correct 
of personages and the misshapen, crotchety, often 
violent and explosive little man on the other side 
of her, leaning and swaying towards him as she 
speaks, and looking into his sad eyes as if she 
found some fountain in them at which her soul 
could quiet its thirst. 

Women like the Model are a natural product 
of a chiUy climate and high culture. It is not 

" The frolic wind that breathes the spring, 
Zephyr with Aurora playing,'* 

when the two meet 

" on beds of violets blue, 

And fresh- blown roses washed in dew,** 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 187 

that claim such women as their offspring. It is 
rather the east wind, as it blows out of the fogs 
of Newfoundland, and clasps a clear-eyed wintry 
noon on the chill bridal couch of a New England 
ice-quarry. — Don't throw up your cap now, and 
hurrah as if this were giving up everything, and 
turning against the best growth of our latitudes, 
— the daughters of the soil. The brain-women 
never interest us like the heart-women ; white roses 
please less than red. But our Northern seasons 
have a narrow green streak of spring, as well 
as a broad white zone of winter, — they have a 
glowing band of summer and a golden stripe 
of autumn in their many-colored wardrobe; and 
women are born to us that wear all these hues 
of earth and heaven in their souls. Our ice-eyed 
brain-women are really admirable, if we only ask 
of them just what they can give, and no more. 
Only compare them, talking or writing, with one 
of those babbling, chattering dolls, of warmer lati- 
tudes, who do not know enough even to keep out 
of print, and who are interesting to us only as 
specimens of arrest of development for our psycho- 
logical cabinets. 

Good-bye, Model of all the Virtues! We can 
ppare you now. A little clear perfection, undiluted 
with human weakness, goes a great way. Go ! 
be useful, be honorable and honored, be just, be 
charitable, talk pure reason, and help to disenchant 



188 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the world by the light of an achromatic under- 
standing. Good-bye! Where is my Beranger? 
I must read a verse or two of " Fretillon." 

Fair play for all. But don't claim incompatible 
qualities for anybody. Justice is a very rare virtue 
in our community. Everything that public senti- 
ment cares about is put into a Papin's digester, 
and boiled under high pressure till all is turned 
into one homogeneous pulp, ^nd the very bones 
give up their jelly. What are all the strongest 
epithets of our dictionary to us now? The critics 
and politicians, and especially the philanthropists, 
have chewed them, till they are mere wads of 
syllable-fibre, without a" suggestion of their old 
pungency and power. 

Justice ! A good man respects the rights even 
of brute matter and arbitrary symbols. If he 
writes the same word twice in succession, by 
accident, he always erases the one that stands 
second; has not the fir^^t-comer the prior right? 
This act of abstract justice, which I trust many 
of my readers, like myself, have often performed, 
is a curious anti-illustration, by the way, of the 
absolute wickedness of human dispositions. Why 
doesn't a man always strike out the first of the 
two words, to gratify his diabolical love of in^ 
justice ? 

So, I say, we owe a genuine, substantial tribute 
of respect to these filtered intellects which have 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 189 

left their womanhood on the strainer. They are 
so clear that it is a pleasure at times to look at 
the world of thought through them. But the rose 
and purple tints of richer natures they cannot give 
us, and it is not just to them to ask it. 

Fashionable society gets at these rich natures 
very often in a way one would hardly at first 
think of. It loves vitality above all things, some- 
times disguised by affected. Janguor, always well 
kept under by the laws of good-breeding, — but 
still it loves abuadant life, opulent and showy 
organizations, — the spherical rather than the plane 
trigonometry of female architecture, — plenty of red 
blood, flashing eyes, tropical voices, and forms that 
bear the splendors of dress without growing pale 
beneath their lustre. Among these you will find 
the most delicious women you will ever meet, — 
women whom dress and flattery and the round of 
city gayeties cannot ,. spoil, — talking with whom, 
you forget their diamonds and laces, — and around 
whom all the nice details of elegance, which the 
cold-blooded beauty next them is scanning so nice- 
ly, blend in one harmonious whole, too perfect to be 
disturbed by the petulant sparkle of a jewel, or the 
yellow glare of a bangle, or the gay toss of a feather. 

There are many things that I, personally, love 
better than fashion or wealth. Not to speak of 
those highest objects of our love and loyalty, 1 
think I love ease and independence better than 



190 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the golden slavery of perpetual matinees and soi- 
rees, or the pleasures of accumulation. 

But fashion and wealth are two very solemn 
realities, which the frivolous class of moralists have 
talked a great deal of silly stuff about. Fashion 
is only the attempt to realize Art in living forms 
and social intercourse. What business has a man 
who knows nothing about the beautiful, and can- 
not pronounce the word view, to talk about 
fashion to a set of people who, if one of the 
quality left a card at their doors, would contrive 
to keep it on the very top of their heap of the 
names of their two-story acquaintances, till it was 
as yellow as the Codex Vaticanus ? 

Wealth, too, — what an endless repetition of 
the same foolish trivialities about it! Take* the 
single fact of its alleged uncertain tenure and 
transitory character. In old times, when men were 
all the time fighting and robbing each other, — in 
those tropical countries where the Sabeans and 
the Chaldeans stole all a man's cattle and camels, 
and there were frightful tornadoes and rains of 
fire from heaven, it was true enough that riches 
took wings to themselves not unfrequently in a 
very unexpected way. But, with common pru- 
dence in investments, it is not so now. In fact, 
there is nothing earthly that lasts so well, on the 
whole, as money. A man's learning dies with 
him ; even his virtues fade out of remembrance ; 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 191 

but the dividends on the stocks he bequeathes to 
his children live and keep his memory green. 

I do not think there is much courage or origi- 
nality in giving utterance to truths that everybody 
knows, but which get overlaid by conventional 
trumpery. The only distinction which it is neces- 
sary to point out to feeble-minded folk is this : 
that, in asserting the breadth and depth of that 
significance which gives to fashion and fortune 
their tremendous power, we do .not indorse the 
extravagances which often disgrace the one, nor 
the meanness which often degrades the other. 

A remark which seems to contradict a univer- 
sally current opinion is not generally to be taken 
" neat," but watered with the ideas of common- 
sense and commonplace people. So, if any of my 
young friends should be tempted to waste their 
substance on white kids and " all-rounds," or to 
insist on becoming millionnaires at once, by any- 
thing I have said, I will give them references to 
some of the class referred to, well known to the 
public as providers of literary diluents, who will 
weaken any truth so that there is not an old 
woman in the land who cannot take it with per- 
fect impunity. 

I am afraid some of the blessed saints in dia- 
monds will think I mean to flatter them. I hope 
not ; — if I do, set it down as a weakness. But 
there is so much foolish talk about wealth and 



192 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

fashion, (which, of course, draw a good many 
heartless and essentially vulgar people into the 
glare of their candelabra, but which have a real 
respectability and meaning, if we will only look 
at them stereoscopically, with both eyes instead 
of one,) that I thought it a duty to speak a 
few words for them. Why can't somebody give 
us a list of things that everybody thinks and no- 
body says, and another list of things that every- 
body says and nobody thinks ? 

Lest my parish should suppose we have for- 
gotten graver matters in these lesser topics, I beg 
them to drop these trifles and read the following 
lesson for the day. 



THE TWO STREAMS. 

Behold the rocky wall 
That down its sloping sides 
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall, 
In rushing river-tides ! 

Yon stream, whose sources run 
Turned by a pebble's edge, 
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun 
Through the cleft mountain-ledge. 

The slender rill had strayed, 
But for the slanting stone, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 193 

To evening's ocean, witli the tangled braid 
Of foam-flecked Oregon. 

So from the heights of Will 
Life's parting stream descends, 
And, as a moment turns its slender rill, 
Each widening torrent bends, — 

From the same cradle's side, 
From the same mother's knee, — 
One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
One to the Peaceful Sea! 



VII. 



Our landlady's daughter is a young lady of 
some pretensions to gentility. She wears her bon- 
net well back on her head, which is known by all 
to be a mark of high breeding. She wears her 
trains very long, as the great ladies do in Europe. 
To De sure, their dresses are so made only to 
sweep the tapestried floors of chateaux and pal- 
aces; as those odious aristocrats of the other side 
do not go draggling through the mud in silks and 
satins, but, forsooth, must ride in coaches when 
they are in full dress. It is true, that, considering 
various habits of the American people, also the 
little accidents which the best-kept sidewalks are 
liable to, a lady who has swept a mile of them 



194 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

is not exactly in such a condition that one would 
care to be her neighbor. But then there is no 
need of being so hard on these slight weaknesses 
of the poor, dear women as our little deformed 
gentleman was the other day. 

There are no such women as the Boston 

women, Sir, — he said. Forty-two degrees, north 

latitude, Rome, Sir, Boston, Sir ! They had grand 

women in old Rome, Sir, — and the women bore 

such men-children as never the world saw before. 

/ And so it was here, Sir. I tell you, the revolu- 

)tion the Boston boys started had to run in wom- 

■an's milk before it ran in man's blood. Sir! 

But confound the make-believe women we have 
turned loose in our streets! — where do they come 
from ? Not out of Boston parlors, I trust. Why, 
there isn't a beast or a bird that would drag its 
tail through the dnt in the way these creatures 
do their dresses. Because a queen or a duchess 
wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all- 
work or a factory-girl thinks she must make her- 
self a nuisance by trailing through the street, pick- 
ing up and carrying about with her pah! 

that's what I call getting vulgarity into your 
bones and marrow. Making believe be what you 
are not is the essence of vulgarity. Show over 
dirt is the one attribute of vulgar people. If any 
man can walk behind one of these women and 
see what she rakes up as she goes, and not 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195 

feel squeamish, he has got a tough stomach. I 
wouldn't let one of 'em into my room without 
serving 'em as David served Saul at the cave in 
the wilderness, — cut off his skirts, Sir! cut off his 
skirts ! 

I suggestedj that I had seen some pretty stylish 
ladies who offended in the way he condemned. 

Stylish women, I don't doubt, — said the Little 
Gentleman. — Don't tell me that a true lady ever 
sacrifices the duty of keeping all about her sweet 
and clean to the wish of making a vulgar show. 
I won't believe it of a lady. There are some 
things that no fashion has any right to touch, and 
cleanliness is one of those things. If a woman 
wishes to show that her husband or her father has 
got money, which she wants and means to spend, 
but doesn't know how, let her buy a yard or two 
of silk and pin it to her dress when she goes out 
to walk, but let her unpin it before she goes into 
the house; — there may be poor women that will 
think it worth disinfecting. It is an insult to a 
respectable laundress to carry such things into 
a house for her to deal with. I don't like the 
Bloomers any too well, — in fact, I never saw but 
one, and she — or he, or it — had a mob of boys 
after her, or whatever you call the creature, as if 
she had been a — 

The Little Gentleman stopped short, — flushed 
somewhat, and looked round with that involun- 



196 THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tary, suspicious glance which the subjects of any- 
bodily misfortune are very apt to cast round them. 
His eye wandered over the company, none of 
whom, excepting myself and one other, had, prob- 
ably, noticed the movement. They fell at last on 
Iris, — his next neighbor, you remember. 

We know in a moment, on looking sud- 

(denly at a person, if that person's eyes have been 
fixed on us. Sometimes we are conscious of it 
before we turn so as to see the person. Strange 
secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of 
love, leak out in this way. There is no need of 
Mrs. Felix Lorraine's reflection in the mirror, to 
tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our 
backs. We know it, as we know by the ominous 
stillness of a child that some mischief or other is 
going on. A young girl betrays, in a moment, 
that her eyes have been feeding on the face where 
you find them fixed, and not merely brushing over 
it with their pencils of blue or brown light. 

A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates us, 
you may also observe, to that upon which we 
look. Roses redden the cheeks of her who stoops 
to gather them, and buttercups turn little people's 
chins yellow. When we look at a vast land- 
scape, our chests expand as if w^e would enlarge 
to fill it. When we examine a minute object, we 
naturally contract, nor only our foreheads, but all 
our dimensions. If I $ee two men wrestling, I 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 197 

wrestle too, with my limbs and features. When 
a country-fellow comes upon the stage, you will 
see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the 
bumpkin expression. There is no need of multi- 
plying instances to reach this generalization; every 
person and thing we look upon puts its special 
mark upon us. If this is repeated often enough, 
we get a permanent resemblance to it, or, at least, 
a fixed aspect which we took from it. Husband 
and. wife come to look alike at last, as has often 
been noticed. It is a common saying of a jockey, 
that he is " all horse " ; and I have often fancied 
that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an 
angular movement of the arm, that remind one 
of a pump and the working of its handle. 

All this came in by accident, just because I 
happened to mention that the Little Gentleman 
found that Iris had been looking at him with her 
soul in her eyes, when his glance rested on her 
after wandering round the company. What he 
thought, it is hard to say; but the shadow of 
suspicion faded off from his face, and he looked 
calmly into the amber eyes, resting his cheek 
upon the hand that wore the red jewel. 

If it were a possible thing, — women are 

such strange creatures! Is there any trick that 
love and their own fancies do not play them? 
Just see how they marry! A woman that gets 
hold of a bit of manhood is like one of those 



198 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Chinese wood-carvers who work on any odd, fan- 
tastic root that comes to hand, and, if it is only 
bulbous above and bifurcated below, will always 
contrive to make a man — such as he is — out of 
it. I should like to see any kind of a man, dis- 
tinguishable from a Gorilla, that some good and 
even pretty woman could not shape a husband 
out of. 

A child, — yes, if you choose to call her 

so, — but such a child ! Do you know how Art 
brings all ages together ? There is no age to the 
angels and ideal human forms among which the 
artist lives, and he shares their youth until his 
hand trembles and his eye grows dim. The youth- 
ful painter talks of white-bearded Leonardo as if 
he were a brother, and the veteran forgets that 
Raphael died at an age to which his own is of 
patriarchal antiquity. 

But why this lover of the beautiful should be 
so drawn to one whom Nature has wronged so 
deeply seems hard to explain. Pity, I suppose. 
They say that leads to love. 

1 thought this matter over until I became 

excited and curious, and determined to set myself 
more seriously at work to find out what was 
going on in these wild hearts and where their 
passionate lives were drifting. I say wild hearts 
and passionate lives, because I think I can look 
through this seeming calmness of youth and this 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 199 

apparent feebleness of organization, and see that 
Nature, whom it is very hard to cheat, is only- 
waiting as the sapper waits in his mine, know- 
ing that all is in readiness and the slow-match 
burning quietly down to the powder. He will 
leave it by-and-by, and then it will take care of 
itself. 

One need not wait to see the smoke coming 
through the roof of a house and the flames break- 
ing out of the windows to know that the build- 
ing is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, 
unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing 
little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. 
There is a whifF of something floating about, sug- 
gestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyrolig- 
neous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's 
eyes. Let us get up and see what is going on. 
— Oh, — oh, — oh ! do you know what has got 
hold of you ? It is the great red dragon that is 
born of the little red eggs we call sparks^ with his 
hundred blowing red manes, and his thousand 
lashing red tails, and his multitudinous red eyes 
glaring at every crack and key-hole, and his count- 
less red tongues lapping the beams he is going to ' 
crunch presently, and his hot breath warping the / 
panels and cracking the glass and making old \ 
timber sweat that had forgottea it was ever alive I 
with sap. Run for your life ! leap ! or you" will 
be a cinder in five minutes, that nothing but a 



200 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

coroner would take for the wreck of a human 
being ! 

If any gentleman will have the kindness to stop 
this run-away comparison, I shall be much obliged 
to him. All I intended to say was, that we need 
not wait for hearts to break out in flames to 
know that they are full of combustibles and that 
a spark has got among them. I don't pretend to 
say or know what it is that brings these two per- 
sons together; — and when I say together, I only 
mean that there is an evident affinky of some 
kind or other which makes their commonest inter- 
course strangely significant, as that each seems to 
understand a look or a word of the other. When 
the young girl laid her hand on the Little Gentle- 
man's arm, — which so greatly shocked the Model, 
you may remember, — I saw that she had learned 
the lion-tamer's secret. She masters him, and yet 
I can see she has a kind of awe of him, as the 
man who goes into the cage has of the monster 
that he makes a baby of. 

One of two things must happen. The first is 
love, downright love, on the part of this young 
girl, for the poor little misshapen man. You may 
laugh, if you like. But women are apt to love 
the men who they think have the largest capacity 
of loving ; — and who can love like one that has 
thirsted all his life long for the smile of youth 
and beauty, and seen it fly his presence as the 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201 

wave ebbed from the parched lips of him whose 
fabled punishment is the perpetual type of human 
longing and disappointment ? What would be- 
come of him^ if this fresh soul should stoop upon 
him in her first young passion, as the flamingo 
drops out of the sky upon some lonely and dark 
lagoon in the marshes of Cagliari, with a flutter 
of scarlet feathers and a kindling of strange fires 
in the shadowy waters that hold her burning 
image ? 

Marry her, of course ? — Why, no, not of 

course, I should think the chance less, on the 
whole, that he would be willing to marry her than 
she to marry him. 

There is one other thing that might happen. If 
the interest he awakes in her gets to be a deep 
one, and yet has nothing of love in it, she will 
glance off from him into some great passion or 
other. All excitements run to love in women of 
a certain — let us not say age, but youth. An 
electrical current passing through a coil of wire 
makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, 
but not touching it. So a woman is turned into 
a love-magnet by a tingling current of life running 
round her. I should like to see one of them bal- 
anced on a pivot properly adjusted, and watch if 
she did not turn so as to point north and south, 
— as she would, if the love-currents are like those 
of the earth our mother. 

9* 



202 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Pray, do you happen to remember Words- 
worth's "Boy of Windermere"? This boy used 
to put his hands to his mouth, and shout aloud, 
mimicking the hooting of the owls, who would 
answer him 

• "with quivering peals, 
And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud . 
Redoubled and redoubled." 

When they failed to answer him, and he hung 
listening intently for their voices, he would some- 
times catch the faint sound of far distant water- 
falls, or the whole scene around him would im- 
print itself with new force upon his perceptions. — 
Read the sonnet, if you please ; — it is Words- 
worth all over, — trivial in subject, solemn in style, 
vivid in description, prolix in detail, true metaphys- 
ically, but immensely suggestive of "imagination," 
to use a mild term, when related as an actual fact 
of a sprightly youngster. 

All I want of it is to enforce the principle, that, 
when the door of the soul is once opened to a 
guest, there is no knowing who will come in 
next. 

Our young girl keeps up her early habit 

of sketching heads and characters. Nobody is, I 
should think, more faithful and exact in the draw- 
ing of the academical figures given her as lessons; 
but there is a perpetual arabesque of fancies that 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 203 

runs round the margin of her drawings, and there 
is one book which I know she keeps to run riot 
in, where, if anywhere, a shrewd eye would be 
most likely to read her thoughts. This book of 
hers I mean to see, if I can get at it honorably. 

I have never yet crossed the threshold of the 
Ijittle Gentleman's chamber. How he lives, when 
he once gets within it, I can only guess. His 
hours are late, as I have said; often, on waking 
late in the night, I see the light through cracks in 
his window-shutters on the wall of the house op- 
posite. If the times of witchcraft w^ere not over, 
I should be afraid to be so close a neighbor to a 
place from which there come such strange noises. 
Sometimes it is the dragging of something heavy 
over the floor, that makes me shiver to hear it, — 
it sounds so like what people that kill other people 
have to do now and then. Occasionally I hear 
very sweet strains of music, — whether of a wind 
or stringed instrument, or a human voice, strange 
as it may seem, I have often tried to find out, 
but through the partition I could not be quite 
sure. If I have not heard a woman cry and 
moan, and then again laugh as though she would 
die laughing, I have heard sounds so like them 
that — I am a fool to confess it — I have covered 
my head with the bedclothes ; for I have had a 
fancy in my dreams, that I could hardly shake 
off when I woke up, about that so-called witch 



204 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that was his great-grandmother, or whatever it 
was, — a sort of fancy that she visited the Little 
Gentleman, — a young woman in old-fashioned 
dress, with a red ring round her white neck, — 
not a necklace, but a dull stain. 

Of course you don't suppose that I have any 
foolish superstitions about the matter, — I, the 
Professor, who have seen enough to take all that 
nonsense out of any man's head ! It is not our be- 
liefs that frighten us half so much as our fancies. 
A man not only believes, but knows he runs a 
risk, whenever he steps into a railroad car; but it 
doesn't worry him much. On the other hand, carry 
that man across a pasture a little way from some 
dreary country-village, and show him an old house 
where there were strange deaths a good many 
years ago, and there are rumors of ugly spots on 

the walls, the old man hung himself in the 

garret, that is certain, and ever since the country- 
people have called it "the haunted house," — the 
owners haven't been able to let it since the last 
tenants left on account of the noises, — so it has 
fallen into sad decay, and the moss grows on the 
rotten shingles of the roof, and the clapboards 
have turned black, and the windows rattle like 
teeth that chatter with fear, and the walls of the 
house begin to lean as if its knees were shak- 
ing, take the man who didn't mind the real 

risk of the cars to that old house, on some. dreary 



THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 

November evening, and ask him to sleep there 
alone, — how do you think he will like it? He 
doesn't believe one word of ghosts, — but then he 
knows, that, whether waking or steeping, his im- 
agination will people the haunted chambers with 
ghostly images. It is not what we believe^ as I 
said before, that frightens us commonly, but what 
we conceive. A principle that reaches a good 
way, if I am not mistaken. I say, then, that, if 
these odd sounds coming from the Little Gentle- 
man's chamber sometimes make me nervous, so 
that I cannot get to sleep, it is not because I 
suppose he i& engaged in any unlawful or myste- 
rious way. The only wicked suggestion that ever 
came into my head was one that was founded on 
the landlady's story of his having a pile of gold ; 
it was a ridiculous fancy ; besides, I suspect the 
story of sweating gold was only one of the many 
fables got up to make the Jews odious and afford 
a pretext for plundering them. As for the sound 
like a woman laughing and crying, I never said 
it was a woman's voice ; for, in the first place, I 
could only hear indistinctly ; and, secondly, he 
may have an organ, or some queer instrument or 
other, with what they call the vox humana stop. 
If he moves his bed round to get away from the 
window, or for any such reason, there is nothing 
very frightful in that simple operation. Most of 
our foolish conceits explain themselves in some 



206 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

such simple way. And yet, for all that, I confess, 
that, when I woke up the other evening, and 
beard, first a sweet complaining cry, and then 
footsteps, and then the dragging sound, — nothing 
but his bed, 1 am quite sure, — I felt a stirring 
in the roots of my hair as the feasters did in 
Keats's terrible poem of " Lamia." 

There is nothing very odd in my feeling nervous 
when I happen to lie awake and get listening for 
sounds. Just keep your ears open any time after 
midnight, when you are lying in bed in a lone 
attic of a dark night. What horrid, strange, sug- 
gestive, unaccountable noises you will hear! The 
stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead 
things seem to be alive. Crack ! That is the old 
chest of drawers ; you never hear it crack in the 
daytime. Creak I There's a door ajar ; you know 
you shut them all. Where can that latch be that 
rattles so ? Is anybody trying it softly ? or, worse 

than any body^ is ? (Cold shiver.) Then 

a sudden gust that jars all the windows ; — very 
strange ! — there does not seem to be any wind 
about that it belongs to. When it stops, you 
hear the worms boring in the powdery beams 
overhead. Then steps outside, — a stray animal, 
no doubt. All right, — but a gentle moisture 
breaks out all over you ; and then something like 
a whistle or a cry, — another gust of wind, per- 
haps ; that accounts for the rustling that just made 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 207 

« 

your heart roll over and tumble about, so that it 
felt more like a liNje rat under your ribs than a 
part of your own body; then a crash of some- 
thing that has fallen, — blown over, very likely 

Pater noster^ qui eS in caelis I for you are 

damp and cold, and sitting bolt upright, and the 
bed trembling so that the death-watch is frightened 
and has stopped ticking ! 

No, — night is an awful time for strange noises 
and secret doings. Who ever dreamed, till one 
of our sleepless neighbors told us of it, of that 
Walpurgis gathering of birds and beasts of prey, 
— foxes, and owls, . and crows, and eagles, that 
come from all the country round on moonshiny 
nights to crunch the clams and muscles, and pick 
out the eyes of dead fishes that the storm has 
thrown on Chelsea Beach ? Our old mother Na- 
ture has pleasant and cheery tones enough for us 
when she comes in her dress of blue and gold 
over the eastern hill-tops ; but when she follows 
us up-stairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet 
and diamonds, every creak of her sandals and 
every whisper of her lips is full of mystery and 
fear. 

You understand, then, distinctly, that I do not 
believe there is anything about this singular little 
neighbor of mine which is as it should not be. 
Probably a visit to his room would clear up all 
that has puzzled me, and make me laugh at the 



208 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

notions which began, I suppose, in nightmares, 
and ended by keeping my imagination at work so 
as almost to make me uncomfortable at times. 
But it is not so easy to visit him as some of our 
other boarders, for various reasons which I will 
not stop to mention. I think some of them are 
rather pleased to get "the Professor" under their 
ceilings. 

The young man John, for instance, asked me 
to come up one day and try some " old Barbon," 
which he said was A 1. On asking him what 
was the number of his room, he answered, that 
it was forty-'leven, sky-parlor floor, but that I 
shouldn't find it, if he didn't go ahead to show 
me the way. I followed him to his habitat^ being 
very willing to see in what kind of warren he 
burrowed, and thinking I might pick up some- 
thing about the boarders who had . excited my 
curiosity. 

• Mighty close quarters they were where the 
young man John bestowed himself and his furni- 
ture ; this last consisting of a bed, a chair, a 
bureau, a trunk, and numerous pegs with coats 
and " pants " and " vests," — as he was in the 
habit of calling waistcoats and pantaloons or trou- 
sers, — hanging up as if the owner had melted 
out of them. Several prints were pinned up un- 
framed^ — among them that grand national por- 
trait-piece, "Barnum presenting Ossian E. Dodge 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209 

to Jenny Lind," and a picture of a famous trot, 
in which I admired anew the cabalistic air of that 
imposing array of expressions, and especially the 
Italicized word, " Dan Mace names b. h. Major 
Slocum," and " Hiram Woodruff names g. m. 
Lady Smith." "Best three in five. Time: 2.40, 
2.46, 2.50." 

That set me thinking how very odd this matter 
of trotting hoj-ses is, as an index of the mathe- 
matical exactness of the laws of living mechanism, 
I saw Lady Suffolk trot a mile in 2.26. Flora 
Temple has trotted close down to 2.20; and 
Ethan Allen in 2.25, or less. Many horses have 
trotted their mile under 2.30; none that I remem- 
ber in public as low down as 2.20. From five 
to ten seconds^ then, in about a hundred and sixty 
is the whole range of the maxima of the present 
race of trotting-horses. The same thing is seen in 
the running of men. Many can run a mile in five 
minutes; but when one comes to the fractions be- 
low, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 
the maximum is reached. Averages of masses 
have been studied more than averages of maxima 
anil minima. We know from the Registrar- Gen- 
eral's Reports, that a certain number of children — 
say from one to two dozen — die every year in 
England from drinking hot water out of spouts 
of teakettles. We know, that, among suicides, 
women and men past a certain age almost never 



210 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

use fire-arms. A woman who has made up her 
mind to die is still afraid of a pistol or a gun. 
Or is it that the explosion would derange her 
costume ? I say, averages of masses we have ; 
but our tables of maxima we owe to the sporting 
men more than to the philosophers. The lesson 
their experience teaches is, that Nature makes no 
leaps, — does nothing per saltmn. The greatest 
brain that ever lived, no doubt, was only a small 
fraction of an idea ahead of the second best. Just 
look at the chess-players. Leaving out the phe- 
nomenal exceptions, the nice .shades that separate 
the skilful ones show how closely their brains ap- 
proximate, — almost as closely as chronometers. 
Such a person is a " knight-plsijer,''^ — he must 
have that piece given him. Another must have 
two pawns. Another, " pawn and two," or one 
pawn and two moves. Then we find one who 
claims " pawn and move," holding himself, with 
this fractional advantage, a match for one who 
would be pretty sure to beat him playing even. — 
So much are minds alike ; and you and I think 
we are "peculiar," — that Nature broke her jelly- 
mould after shaping our cerebral convolutions ! 
So I reflected, standing and looking at the pic- 
ture. 

1 say, Governor, — broke in the young man 

John, — them bosses '11 stay jest as well, if you'll 
only set down. I've had 'em this year, and they 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 211 

haven't stirred. — He spoke, and handed the chair 
towards mej — seating himself, at the same time, 
on the end of the bed. 

You have lived in this house some time ? — I 
said, — with a note of interrogation at the end of 
the statement. 

Do I look as if I'd lost much flesh ? — said he, 
— -answering my question by another. 

No, — said I; — for that matter, I think you do 
credit to " the bountifully furnished table of the 
excellent lady who provides so liberally for the 
company that meets around her hospitable board." 

[The sentence in quotation-marks was from one 
of those disinterested editorials in small type, 
which I suspect to have been furnished by a 
fi-iend of the landlady's, and paid for as an adver- 
tisement. This impartial testimony to the superior 
qualities of the establishment and its head at- 
tracted a number of applicants for admission, and 
a couple of new boarders made a brief appearance 
at the table. One of them was of the class of 
people who grumble if they don't get canvas-backs 
and woodcocks every day, for three-fifty per week. 
The other was subject to somnambulism, or walk- 
ing in the night, when he ought to have been 
asleep in his bed. In this state he walked into 
several of the boarders' chambers, his eyes wide 
open, as is usual with somnambulists, and, from 
some odd instinct or other, wishing to know what 



212 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the hour was, got together a number of their 
watches, for the purpose of comparing them, as it 
would seem. Among them was a repeater, be- 
longing to our young Marylander. He happened 
to wake up while the somnambulist was in his 
chamber, and, not knowing his infirmity, caught 
hold of him and gave him a dreadful shaking, 
after which he tied his hands and feet, and 'so 
left. him till morning, when he introduced him to 
a gentleman used to taking care of such cases of 
somnambulism.] 

If you, my reader, will please to skip backward, 
over this parenthesis, you will come to our con- 
versation, which it has interrupted. 

It a'n't the feed, — said the young man John, — 
it's the old woman's looks when a fellah lays it in 
too strong. The feed's well enough. After geese 
have got tough, 'n' turkeys have got strong, 'n' 
lamb's got old, 'n' veal's pretty nigh beef, 'n' spar- 
ragrass's growin' tall 'n' slim 'n' scattery about the 
head, 'n' green peas are gettin' so big 'n' hard 
they'd be dangerous if you fired 'em out of a 
revolver, we get hold of all them delicacies of the 
season. But it's too much like feedin' on live 
folks and devourin' widdah's substance, to lay 
yourself out in the eatin' way, when a fellah's as 
hungry as the chap that said a turkey was too 
much for one 'n' not enough for two. I can't 
help lookin' at the old wo^ian. Corned-beef-days 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 213 

I she's tolerable calm. Roastin'-days she worries 

1 some, 'n' keeps a sharp eye on the chap that 

I carves. But when there's anything in the poultry 

line, it seems to hurt her feelin's so to see the 

I knife goin' into the breast and joints com in' to 

I pieces, that there's no comfort in eatin'. When 

\ 1 cut up an old fowl and help the boarders, I 

always feel as if I ought to say, Won't you have 

a slice of widdah? — instead of chicken. 

The young man John fell into a train of reflec- 
tions which ended in his producing a Bologna 
sausage, a plate of "crackers," as we Boston folks 
call certain biscuits, and the bottle of whiskey de- 
scribed as being A 1. 

Under the influence of the crackers and sausage, 
he grew cordial and communicative. 

It was time, I thought, to sound him as to 
those of our boarders w^ho had excited my curi- 
osity. 

What do you think of our young Iris? — I 
began. 

Fust-rate little filly; — he said. — Pootiest and 
nicest little chap I've seen since the schoolma'am 
left. Schoolma'am was a brown-haired one, — 
eyes colTee-color. This one has got wine-colored 
eyes, — 'n' that's the reason they turn a fellah's 
head, I suppose. 

This is a splendid blonde, — I said, — the other 
was a brunette. Which style do you like best? 



214 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Which do I like best, boiled mutton or roast 
mutton ? — said the young man John. Like 'em 
both, — it a'n't the color of 'em makes the good- 
ness. I've been kind of lonely since schoolma'am 
went away. Used to like to look at her. I never 
said anything particular to her, that I remember, 
but 

I don't know whether it was the cracker and 
sausage, or that the young fellow's feet were 
treading on the hot ashes of some longing that 
had not had time to cool, but his eye glistened 
as he stopped. 

I suppose she wouldn't have looked at a fellah 
like me, — he said, — but 1 come pretty near 
tryin'. If she had said. Yes, though, I shouldn't 
have known what to have done with her. Can't 
marry a woman now-a-days till you're so deaf 
you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear 
what she says, and so long-sighted you can't see 
what she looks like nearer than arm's-length. 

Here is another chance for you, — I said. — 
What do you want nicer than such a young lady 
as Iris ? 

It's no use, — he answered. — I look at them 
girls and feel as the fellah did when he missed 
catchin' the trout. — 'To'od 'a' cost more butter to 
cook him 'n' he's worth, — says the fellah. — Takes 
a whole piece o' goods to cover a girl up now-a- 
days. I'd as lief undertake to keep a span of 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 215 

elephants, — and take an ostrich to board, too, — 
as to marry one of 'em. What's the use? Clerks 
and counter-jumpers a'n't anything. Sparragrass 
and green peas a'n't for them, — not while they're 
young and tender. Hossback-ridin' a'n't for them, 
— except once a year, — on Fast-day. And rnar- 
ryin' a'n't for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lone- 
ly, and would like to have a nice young woman, 
to tell her how lonely he feels. And sometimes a 
fellah, — here the young man John looked very 
confidential, and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of 
his weakness, — sometimes a fellah would like to 
have one o' them small young ones to trot on his 
knee and push about in a little wagon, — a kind 
of a little Johnny, you know; — it's odd enough, 
but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them little 
articles, except the folks that are so .rich they can 
buy everything, and the folks that are so poor 
they don't want anything. It makes nice boys of 
us young fellahs, no doubt! And it's pleasant to 
see fine young girls sittin', like shopkeepers behind 
their goods, waitin', and waitin', and waitin', 'n' 
no customers, — and the men lingerin' round and 
lookin' at the goods, like folks that w^ant to be 
customers, but haven't got the money ! 

Do you think the. deformed gentleman means 
to make love to Iris? — I said. 

What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry 
him! Well, now, that's comin' of it a little too 



216 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

strong. Yes, I gaess she will marry him and 
carry him round in a basket, like a lame bantam ! 
Look here ! — he said, mysteriously ; — one of the 
boarders swears there's a woman comes to see 
him, and that he has heard her singin' and 
screechin'. I should like to know what he's about 
in that den of his. He lays low 'n' keeps dark, 

— and, I tell you, there's a good many of the 
boarders would like to get into his chamber, but 
he don't seem to want 'em. Biddy could tell 
somethin' about what she's seen when she's been 
to put his room to rights. She's a Paddy 'n' a 
fool, but she knows enough to keep her tongue 
still. All I know is, I saw her crossin' herself 
one day when she came out of that room. She 
looked pale enough, 'q' I heard her mutterin' 
somethin' or other about the Blessed Virgin. If 
it hadn't been for the double doors to that cham- 
ber of his, I'd* have had a squint inside before 
this ; but, somehow or other, it never seems to 
happen that they're both open at once. 

What do you think he employs himself about? 

— said I. 

The young man John winked. 

I waited patiently for the thought, of which 
this wink was the blossom,, to come to fruit in 
words. 

I don't believe in witches, — said the young 
man John. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 217 

Nor I. 

We were both silent for a few minutes. 

Did you ever see the young girl's drawing- 
books, — I saM, presently. 

All but one, — he answered ; — she keeps a lock 
on that, and won't show it. Ma'am Allen, (the 
young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of 
the gentleman with the diamond,) Ma'am Allen 
tried to peek into it one day when she left it on 
the sideboard. « If you please," says she, — 'n' j 
took it from him, 'n' gave him a look that made ( 
him curl up like a caterpillar on ^ hot shovel. I 
only wished he hadn't, and had jest given her a j 
little saas, for I've been takin' boxin'-lessons, 'n' \ 
Pve got a new way of counterin' I want to try / 
on to somebody. 

The end of all this was, that I came away 

from the young fellow's room, feeling that there 
were two principal things that I had to live for, 
for the next six weeks or six months, if it should 
take so long. These were, to get a sight of the 
young girl's drawing-book, which I suspected had 
her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into 
the Little Gentleman's room. 

I don't doubt you think it rather absurd that I 
should trouble myself about these matters. You 
tell me, with some show of reason, that all I shall 
find in the young girl's book will be some out- 

10 



218 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

lines of angels with immense eyes, traceries of 
flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures, among 
which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing 
my own features figuring. Very likely. But I'll 
tell you what I think I shall find. K this child 
has idealized the strange little bit of humanity 
over which she seems to have spread her wings 
like a brooding dove, — if, in one of those wild 
vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, 
she has fairly sprung upon him with her clasping 
nature, as the sea-flowers fold about the first stray 
shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles, 
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in 
this drawing-book of hers, — if I can ever get a 
look at it, — fairly, of course, for I would not play 
tricks to satisfy my curiosity. 

Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman's 
room under any fair pretext, I shall, no doubt, 
satisfy myself in five minutes that he is just like 
other people, and that there is no particular mys- 
tery about him. 

The night after my visit to the young man 
John, I made all these and many more reflections. 
It was about two o'clock in the morning, — bright 
starlight, — so light that I could make out the 
time on my alarm-clock, — when I woke up 
trembling and very moist. It was the heavy, 
dragging sound, as I had often heard it before, 
that waked me. Presently a window was softly 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 219 

closed. I had just begun to get over the agitation 
with which we always awake from nightmare 
dreams, when I heard the sound which seemed to 
me as of a woman's voice, — the clearest, purest 
soprano which one could well conceive of. It was 
not loud, and I could not distinguish a word, if 
it was a woman's voice; but there were recurring 
phrases of sound and snatches of rhythm that 
reached me, which suggested the idea of com- 
plaint, and sometimes, I thought, of passionate 
grief and despair. It died away at last, — and 
then I heard the opening of a door, followed by 
a low, monotonous sound, as of one talking, — 
and then the closing of a door, — and presently 
the light on the opposite wall disappeared and all 
was still for the night. 

By George! this gets interesting, — I said, as I 
got out of bed for a change of night-clothes. 

I had this in my pocket the other day, but 
thought I wouldn't read it at our celebration. So 
I read it to the boarders instead, and print it to 
finish off this record with. 



220 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



ROBINSON OF LEYDEN. 

He sleeps not here ; in hope and prayer 
His wandering flock had gone before, 

But he, the shepherd, might not share 
Their sorrows on the wintry shore. 

Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, 
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread, 

While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, 
The pastor spake, and thus he said : — 

*'Men, brethren, sisters, children dearl 
God calls you hence from over sea; 

Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, 
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee. 

"Ye go to bear the saving word 

To tribes unnamed and shores untrod : 

Heed well the lessons ye have heard 
From those old teachers taught of God. 

"*Yet think not unto them was lent 
All light for all the coming days, 

And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent 
In making straight the ancient ways. 

" The living fountain overflows 
For every flock, for every lamb, 

Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose 
With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam." 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221 

He spake ; with lingering, long embrace, 

AVith tears of love and partings fond, 
They floated down the creeping Maas, 

Along the isle of Ysselmond. 

They passed the frowning towers of Briel, 
The " Hook of Holland's " shelf of sand, 

And grated soon with lifting keel 
The sullen shores of Fatherland. 

No home for these ! — too well they knew 
The mitred king behind -the throne; — 

The sails were- set, the pennons flew, 
And westward ho ! for worlds unknown. 

— And these were they who gave us birth, 

The Pilgrims of the sunset wave, 
Who won for us this virgin earth. 

And freedom with the soil they gave. 

The pastor slumbers by the Rhine, — 

In alien earth the exiles lie, — 
Their nameless graves our holiest shrine, 

His words our noblest battle-cry! 

Still cry them, and the world shall hear, 

Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea I 
Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer, 

Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee I 



222 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



VIII. 

There has been a sort of stillness in the atmos- 
phere of our boarding-house since my last record, 
as if something or other were going on. There is 
no particular change that I can think of in the 
aspect of things; yet I have a feeling as if some 
game of life were, quietly playing and strange 
forces were at work, underneath this smooth sur- 
face of every-day boarding-house life, which would 
show themselves some fine morning or other in 
events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watch- 
ful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell 
as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely 
think me .foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about 
what is going on in a middling-class household 
like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terri- 
ble fact to begin with, — a beautiful young girl, 
with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to 
Nature's women, turned loose among live men. 

Terrible fact? 

Very terrible. Nothing more so. Do you forget 
the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of 
men ? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women 
who made mischief and set nations by the ears 
before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw 
men's hearts out of their bodies, — if pangs that 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 223 

waste men to shadows and drive them into raving 
madness or moping melancholy, — if assassination 
and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is 
always something frightful about a lovely young 
woman. — I love to look at this " Rainbow," as 
her father used sometimes to call her, of ours. 
Handsome creature that she is in forms and 
colors, — the very picture, as it seems to me, of 
that " golden blonde " my friend whose book you 
read last year fell in love with when he was a 
boy, (as you remember, no doubt,) — handsome as 
she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it is not her 
beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let 
me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will 
understand the strange sort of fascination she has 
for me. 

It is in the hearts of many men and women — 
let me add children — that there is a Great Secret 
waiting for them, — a secret of which they get 
hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than 
in later years. These hints come sometimes in 
dreams, sometimes in sudden startling flashes, — 
second wakings, as it were, — a waking out of the 
waking state, which last is very apt to be a half- 
sleep. I have many times stopped short and held 
my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, 
in one of these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of 
course I cannot tell what kind of a secret this is; 
but 1 think of it as a disclosure of certain rela- 



224: THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tions of our personal being to time and space, to 
other intelligences, to the procession of events, and 
to their First Great Cause. This secret seems to 
be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that 
we find here a word and there a syllable, and then 
again only a letter of it; but it never is written 
out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this 
life. I do not think it could be ; for I am dis- 
posed to consider our beliefs about such a possible 
disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an 
enlargement of our faculties in some future state 
than as an expectation to be fulfilled for most of 
us in this life. Persons, however, have fallen into 
trances, -r- as did the Reverend William Tennent, 
among many others, — and learned some* things 
which they could not tell in our human words. 

Now among the visible objects which hint to 
us fragments of this infinite secret for which our 
souls are waiting, the faces of women are those 
that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the 
great mystery. There are women's faces, some 
real, some ideal, which contain something in them 
that becomes a positive element in our creed, so 
direct and palpable a revelation is it of the in- 
finite purity and love. I remember two faces of 
women with wings, such as they call angels, of 
Fra Angelico, — and I just now came across a 
print of Raphael's Santa Apollina, with something 
of the same quality, — which I was sure had their 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 225 

prototypes in the world above ours. No wonder 
the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of 
Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is, 
that it has no women to be worshipped. 

But mind you, it is not every beautiful face 
that hints the Great Secret to us, nor is it only 
in beautiful faces that we find traces of it. Some- 
times it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only 
beauty of a plain countenance; sometimes there 
is so much meaning in the lips of a woman, not 
otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a 
message for us, and wait almost with awe to hear 
their accents. But this young girl has at once 
the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery 
of expression. Can she tell me anything ? Is her 
life a complement of mine, with the missing ele- 
ment in it which I have been groping after 
through so many friendships that I have tired of, 
and through Hush! Is the door fast? Talk- 
ing loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding- 
houses. 

You must have sometimes noted this fact that 
I am going to remind you of and to use for a 
special illustration. Riding along over a rocky 
road, suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of 
the crushing gravel changes to a deep heavy rum- 
ble. There is a great hollow under your feet, — a 
huge unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you, 
in the core of the living rock, it arches its awful 

10* 



226 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

vault, and far away it stretches its winding gal- 
leries, their roofs dripping into streams where 
fishes have been swimming and spawning in the 
dark until their scales are white as milk and their 
eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless. 

So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting 
the same faces, grinding over the same thoughts, 
— the gravel of the soul's highway, — now and 
then jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, 
but must ride over or round as we best may, 
sometimes bringing short up against a disappoint- 
ment, but still working along with the creaking 
and rattling and grating and jerking that belong 
to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling 
vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep under-ground 
reverberation that reveals the unsuspected depth 
of some abyss of thought or passion beneath 
us. 

I wish the girl would go. I don't like to look 
at her so much, and yet I cannot help it. Always 
that same expression of something that I ought 
to know, — something that she was made to tell 
and I to hear, — lying there ready to fall off from 
her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make 
a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps 
a prophet to tell the truth and be hated of men, 
or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry 
stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over 
an age of lies in an hour of passion. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 227 

It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put 
you on the wrong track. The Great Secret that 
I refer to has nothing to do with the Three 
Words. Set your mind -at ease about that, — 
there are reasons I could give you which settle 
all that matter. I don't wonder, however, that 
you confounded the Great Secret with the Three 
Words. 

I LOVE YOU is all the secret that many, nay, 
most women have to tell. When that is said, 
they are like China-crackers on the morning of 
the fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic 
implement is rriade with a slender train which 
leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp 
eye can almost always see the train leading from 
a young girl's eye or lip to the " I love you " in 
her heart. But the Three Words are not the 
Great Secret I mean. No, women's faces are 
only one of the tablets on which that is w^ritten 
in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies deeper 
than Love, though very probably Love is a part 
of it. Some, I think, — Wordsworth might be 
one of them, — spell out a portion of it from cer- 
tain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, 
and others. I can mention several poems of liis 
that have shadowy hints which seem to me to 
come near the region where I think it lies. I 
have known two persons w^ho pursued it with the 
passion of the old alchemists, — all wrong evi- 



228 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

dently, but infatuated, and never giving up the 
daily search for it until they got tremulous and 
feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of 
things that ran and crawled about their floor and 
cfeilings, and so they died. The vulgar called 
them drunkards. 

I told you that I w^ould let you know the mys- 
tery of the effect this young girl's face produces 
on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of 
mine has described, you may remember, as coming 
from certain voices. I cannot translate it into 
words, — only into feelings; and these I have at- 
tempted to shadow by showing that her face 
hinted that revelation of something we are close 
to knowing, which all imaginative persons are 
looking for either in this world or on the very 
threshold of the next» 

You shake your head at the vagueness and 
fanciful incomprehensibleness of my description of 
the expression in a young girl's face. You forget 
what a miserable surface-matter this language is 
in which we try to reproduce our interior state 
of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From 
the light Poh ! which we toss off" from our lips as 
we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinences into 
our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterance which 
comes from our throats in our moments of deepest 
need, is only a space of some three or four inches. 
Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 229 

lispings, and so on, mean very little, compared to 
tones and expression of the features. I give it 
up ; I thought I could shadow ^orth in some 
feeble way, by their aid, the effect this young 
girl's face produces on my imagination; but it is 
of no use. No doubt your head aches, trying to 
make something of my description. If there is 
here and there one that can make anything intel- 
ligible out of my talk about the Great Secret, and 
who has spelt out a syllable or two of it on some 
woman's face, dead or living, that is all I can ex- 
pect. One should see the person with whom he 
converses about such matters. There are dreamy- 
eyed people to whom I should say all these things 
with a certainty of being understood ; — 

That moment that his face I see, 
. ^ I know the man that must hear me : 

To him my tale I teach. 

1 am afraid some of them have not got a 

spare quarter of a dollar for this August number, 
so that they will never see it. 

Let us start again, just as if we had not 

made this ambitious attempt, which may go for 
nothing, and you can have your money refunded, 
if you will make the change. 

This young girl, about whom I have talked so 
unintelligibly, is the unconscious centre of attrac- 
tion to the whole solar system of our breakfast- 



230 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, 
and she again seems to be swayed as by some 
invisible gentle force towards him. That slight 
inclination of two persons with a strong affinity 
towards each other, throwing them a little out of 
plumb when they sit side by side, is a physical 
fact I have often noticed. Then there is a ten- 
dency in all the men's eyes to converge on her; 
and I do firmly believe, that, if all their chairs 
were examined, they would be found a little ob- 
liquely placed, so as to favor the direction in which 
their occupants love to look. 

That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I 
have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no ex- 
ception to the rule. She brought down some 
mignonette one morning, which she had grown in 
her chamber. She gave a sprig to her little neigh- 
bor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by 
the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman. 

Sarvant, Ma'am! Much obleeged, — he said, 

and put it gallantly in his button-hole. — After 
breakfast he must see some of her drawings. 
Very fine performances, — very fine I — truly ele- 
gant productions, — truly elegant! — Had seen Miss 
Linley's needle-work in London, in the year (eigh- 
teen hundred and little or nothing, I think he 
said,) — patronized by the nobility and gentry, 
and Her Majesty, — elegant, truly elegant produc- 
tions, very fine performances; these drawings re- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 231 

minded him of them; — wonderful resemblance to 
Nature; an extraordinary art, painting; Mr. Copley- 
made some very fine pictures that he remembered 
seeing when he was a boy. Used to remember 
some lines about a portrait written by Mr. Cow- 
per, beginning, — 

^ Oh that those lips had language ! Life has pass'd 
With me but roughly since I heard thee last." 

And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking 
about a dead mother of his that he remembered 
ever so much younger than he now was, and 
looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter 
should look. The dead young mother was look- 
ing at the old man, her child, as she used to look 
at him so many, many years ago. He stood still 
as if in a waking dream, his eyes fixed on the 
.drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and 
they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face 
shaped itself out of the glimmering light through 
which he saw them. — What is there quite so pro- 
foundly human as an old man's memory of a 
mother wh© died in his earlier years? Mother she 
remains till manhood, and by-and-by she grows to 
be as a sister ; and at last, when, wrinkled and 
bowed aild broken, he looks back upon her in her 
fair youth, he sees in the sweet image he caresses, 
not his parent, but, as it were, his child. 

If I had not seen all this in the old gentleman's 



232 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

face, the words with which he broke his silence 
would have betrayed his train of thought. 

If they had only taken pictures then as 

they do now ! — he said. — All gone I all gone ! 
nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms 
of her great chair; and I would give a hundred 
pound for the poorest little picture of her, such as 
you can buy for a shilling of anybody tha^ you 
don't want to see. — The old gentleman put his 
hand to his forehead so as to shade his eyes. I 
saw he was looking at the dim photograph of 
memory, and turned from him to Iris. 

How many drawing-books have you filled, — I 

said, — since you began to take lessons ? This 

was the first, — ^ she answered, — since she was 
here ; and it was not full, but there were many 
separate sheets of large size she had covered with 
drawings. 

I turned over the leaves of the book before us. 
Academic studies, principally of the human figure. 
Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth. Limbs 
from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What 
a superb drawing of an arm ! I don't- remember 
it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which 
seem to have been her patterns mainly. From 
Nature, I think, or after a cast from Nature. — 
Oh! 

Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose, 

— I said, taking up the drawing-book with a lock 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 233 

on it. Yes, — she said. I should like to 

see her style of working on a small scale. 

There was nothing "in it worth showing, — she 
said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which 
proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I 
haven't the least doubt. I think, though, I could 
tell by her way of dealing with us what her fan- 
cies were about us boarders. Some of them act 
as if they were bewitched with her, but she does 
not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts seem 
to be on her little neighbor more than on any- 
body else. The young fellow John appears to 
stand second in her good graces. I think he has 
once or twice sent her what the landlady's daugh- 
ter call» bo-kays of flowers, — somebody has, at 
any rate. — I saw a book she had, which must 
have come from the divinity-student. It had a 
dreary title-page, which she had enlivened with a 
fancy portrait of the author, — a face from mem- 
ory, apparently, — one of those faces that small 
children loathe without knowing why, and which 
give them that inward disgust for heaven so many 
of the little wretches betray, when they hear that 
these are "good men," and that heaven is full of 
such. — The gentleman with the diamond — the 
Koh-i-noor, so called by us — was not encouraged, 
I think, by the reception of his packet of per- 
fumed soap. He pulls his purple moustache and 
'ooks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees hira, 



234 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as it should seem. The young Marylander, who 
I thought would have been in love with her be- 
fore this time, sometimes looks from his corner 
across the long diagonal of the table, as much as 
to say, I wish you were up here by me, or I were 
down there by you, — which would, perhaps, be a 
more natural arrangement than the present one. 
But nothing comes of all this, — and nothing has 
come of my sagacious ide^ of finding out the 
girl's fancies by looking into her locked drawing- 
book. 

Not to give up all the questions I was deter- 
mined to solve, I made an attempt also to work 
into the Little Gentleman's chamber. For this 
purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, 
until he was just ready to go up-stairs, and then, 
as if to continue the talk, followed him as he 
toiled back to his room. He rested on the land- 
ing and faced round toward me. There was 
something in his eye which said. Stop there! So 
we finished our conversation on the landing. The 
next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock 
at his door, having a pretext ready. — No answer. 
— Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was 
shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the 
peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen 
boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner 
door were unfastened, — r with unnecessary noise, 
I thought, — and he came into the passage. He 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 235 

pulled the inner door after him and opened the 
outer one at which I stood. He had on a 
flowered silk dressing-gown, such as " Mr. Cop- 
ley " used to paint his old-fashioned merchant- 
princes in ; and a quaint-looking key in his hand. 
Our conversation was short, but long enough to 
convince me that the Little Gentleman did not 
want my company in his chamber, and did not 
mean to have it. 

I have been making a great fuss about what is 
no mystery at all, — a schoolgirl's secrets and a 
whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up such 
nonsense and mind my own business. — Hark ! 
What the deuse is that odd noise in his cham- 
ber? 

I think I am a little superstitious. There 

were two things, when I was a boy, that diabo- 
lized my imagination, — I mean, that gave me a 
distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape 
which prowled round the neighborhood where I 
was born and bred. The first was a series of 
marks called the " Devil's footsteps." These were 
patches of sand in the pastures, where no grass 
grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the 
"dewberry," as our Southern neighbors call it, in 
prettier and more Shakspearian language, did not 
spread its clinging creepers, — where even the pale, 
dry, sadly-sweet " everlasting " could not grow, but 
all was bare and blasted. The second was a mark 



236 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

in one of the public buildings near my home, — 
the college dormitory named after a Colonial 
Governor. I do not think many persons are 
aware of the existence of this mark, — little hav- 
ing been said about the story in print, as it was 
considered very desirable, for the sake of the Insti- 
tution, to hush it up. In the northwest corner, 
and on the level of the third or fourth story, there 
are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty 
well, but not to be mistaken. A considerable 
portion of that corner must have been carried 
away, from within outward. It was an unpleas- 
ant affair; and I do not care to repeat the par- 
ticulars ; . but some young men had been using 
sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, 
when the occurrence, which was variously ex- 
plained, took place. The story of the Appearance 
in the chamber was, I suppose, invented after- 
wards ; but of the injury to the building there 
could be no question ; and the zig-zag line, where 
the mortar is a littfe thicker than before, is still 
distinctly visible. The queer burnt spots, called 
the " Devil's footsteps," had never attracted atten- 
tion before this time, though there is no evidence 
that they had not existed previously, except that 
of the late Miss M., a " Goody," so called, or 
sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had 
a strange horror of referring to an affair of which 
she was thought to know something. — I tell you 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 237 

it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impres- 
sible nature to go up to bed in an old gam- 
brel-roofed house, with untenanted, locked upper- 
chambers, and a most ghostly garret, — with the 
" Devil's footsteps " in the fields behind the house, 
and in front of it the .patched dormitory where 
the unexplained occurrence had taken place which 
startled those godless youths at their mock devo- 
tions, so that one of them was epileptic from that 
day forward, and another, after a dreadful season 
of mental conflict, took holy orders and became 
renowned for his ascetic sanctity. 

There were other circumstances that kept up 
the impression produced by these two singular 
facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark 
storeroom, on looking through .the key-hole 'of 
which, I could dimly see a heap of chairs and 
tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed 
to me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in; 
then: fright to have huddled together and climbed \ 
up on each other's backs, — as the people did in 
that awful crush where so many were killed, at 
the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then 
the Lady's portrait, up-stairs, with the sword- 
thrusts through it, — marks of the British 'officers' 
rapiers, — and the tall mirror in which they used 
to look at their red coats, — confound them for 
smashing its mate! — and the deep, cunningly 
wrought arm-chair in which Lord Percy used to 



238 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sit while his hair was dressing; — he was a gentle- 
man, and always had it covered with a large peig* 
noir, to save the silk covering my grandmother 
embroidered. Then the little room down-stairs, 
from which went the orders to throw up a bank 
of earth on the hill yonder, where you may now 
observe a granite obelisk, — "the study," in my 
father's time, but in those days the council-cham- 
ber of armed men, — sometimes filled with sol- 
diers ; — come with me, and I will show you the 
"dents" left by the butts of their muskets all 
over the floor. — With all these suggestive ob- 
jects round me, aided by the wild stories those 
awful country-boys that came to live in our ser- 
vice brought with them, — of contracts written in 
blood and left out over night, not to be found the 
next morning, (removed by the Evil One, who 
takes his nightly round among our dwellings, and 
filed away for future use,) — of dreams coming 
true,^ — of death-signs, — of - apparitions, — no won- 
der that my imagination got excited, and I was 
liable to superstitious fancies. 

Jeremy Bentham's logic, by which he proved 
that he couldn't possibly see a ghost, is all very 
well — in the day-time. All the reason in the 
world will never get those impressions of child- 
hood, created by just such circumstances as I 
have been telling, out of a man's head. That is 
the only excuse I have to give for the nervous 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 239 

kind of curiosity with which I watch my little 
neighbor, and the obstinacy with which I lie 
awake whenever I hear anything going on in his 
chamber after midnight. 

Bat whatever further observations I may have 
made must be deferred for the present. You will 
see in what way it happened that my thoughts 
were turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones, 
and how I got my fancy full of material images, 
— faces, heads, figures, muscles, and so forth, — 
in such a way that I should have no chance in 
this number to gratify any curiosity you may feel, 
if I had the means of so doing. 

Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my 
periodical record this time. It was all the work 
of a friend of mine, who would have it that I 
should sit to him for my portrait. When a soul 
draws a body in the great lottery of life, where 
every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the 
said soul inspects the said body with the same 
curious interest with which one who has ventured 
into a "gift enterprise" examines the "massive 
silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and im- 
pressible tube, or the " splendid gold ring " with 
the questionable specific gravity, which it has been 
his fortune to obtain in addition to his purchase. 

The soul, having studied the article of which 
it finds itself proprietor, thinks, after a time, it 
knows it pretty well. But there is this difference 



240 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

between its view and that of a person looking at 
us: — "w-e look from within, and see nothing but 
the mould formed by the elements in which we 
are incased; other observers look from without, 
and see us as living statues. To be sure, by the 
aid of mirrors, we get a few glimpses of our out- 
side aspect ; but this occasional impression is al- 
ways modified by that look of the soul from with- 
in outward which none but ourselves can take. A 
portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us. 
The artist looks only from without. He sees us, 
too, with a hundred aspects on our faces we are 
never likely to see. No genuine expression can be 
studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass. 

More than this ; he sees us in a .way in which 
many of our friends or acquaintances never see us. 
Without wearing any mask we are 'conscious of, 
we have a special face for each friend. For, in 
the first place, each puts a special reflection of him- 
self upon us, on the principle of assimilation you 
found referred to in my last record, if you hap- 
pened to read that document. And secondly, each 
of our friends is capable of seeing just so far, and 
no farther, into our face, and each sees in it the 
particular thing that he looks for. Now the artist, 
if he is truly an artist, does not take any one of 
these special views. Suppose he should copy you 
as you appear to the man who wants your name 
to a subscription-list, you could hardly expect a 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241 

friend who entertains you to recognize the like- 
ness to the smiling face which sheds its radiance 
at his board. Even within your own family, I 
am afraid there is a face which the rich uncle 
knowSj that is not so familiar to the poor relation. 
The artist must take one or the other, or some- 
thing compounded of the two, or something dif- 
ferent from either. What the daguerreotype and 
photograph do is to give the features and one 
particular look, the very look which kills all ex- 
pression, that of self-consciousness. The artist 
throws you off your guard, watches you in move- 
ment and in repose, pats your face through its 
exercises, observes its transitions, and so gets the 
whole range of its expression. Out of all this he 
forms an ideal portrait, which is not a copy of 
your exact look at any one time or to any par- 
ticular person. Such a portrait cannot be to 
everybody what the ungloved call " as nat'ral as 
life." Every good picture, therefore, must be 
considered wanting in resemblance by many per- 
sons. 

There is one strange revelation which comes 
out, as the artist shapes your features from his 
outline. It is that you resemble so many rela- 
tives to whom you yourself never had noticed any 
particular likeness in your countenance. 

He is at work at me now, when I catch some 
of these resemblances, thus : — 
11 



242 THE PROFESSOR AT tHE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

There ! that is just the look my father used to 
have sometimes ; I never thought I had a sign of 
it. The mother's eyebrow and grayish-blue eye, 
those I knew I had. But there is a something 
which recalls a smile that faded away from my 
sister's lips — how many years ago! I thought it 
so pleasant in her, that I love myself better for 
having a trace of it. 

Are we not young? Are we not fresh and 
blooming? Wait a bit. The artist takes a mean 
little brush and draws three fine lines, diverging 
outwards from the eye over the temple. Five 
years. — The artist draws one tolerably distinct 
and two faint lines, perpendicularly between the 
eyebrows. Ten years. — The artist breaks up the 
contours round the mouth, so that they look a 
little as a hat does that has been sat upon and 
recovered itself, ready, as one would say, to crum- 
ple up again in the same creases, on smiling or 
other change of feature. — Hold on ! Stop that ! 
Give a young fellow a chance I Are we not 
whole years short of that interesting period of life 
when Mr. Balzac says that a man, etc., etc., etc.? 

There now I That is ourself, as we look after 
finishing an article, getting a three-mile pull with 
the ten-foot sculls, redressing the wrongs of the 
toilet, and standing with the light of hope in our 
eye and the reflection of a red curtain on our 
cheek. Is he not a Poet that painted us ? 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 243 
" Blest be the art that can immortalize ! " 

COAVPER. 

— Young folks look on a face as a unit . 



children who go to school with any given little 
John Smith see in his name a distinctive appella- 
tion, and in his features as special and definite an 
expression of his sole individuality as if he were 
the first created of his race. As soon as we are 
old enough to get the range of three or four gen- 
erations well in hand, and to take in large family 
histories, we never see an individual in a face of 
any stock we know, but a mosaic copy of a pat- 
tern, with fragmentary tints from this and that 
ancestor. The analysis of a face into its ancestral 
elements requires that it should be examined in 
the very earliest infancy, before it has lost that 
ancient and solemn look it brings with it out of 
the past eternity ; and again in that brief space 
when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his 
work, and Death, his silent servant, lifts the veil 
and lets us look at the marble lines he has 
wrought so faithfully ; and lastly, while a painter 
who can seize all the traits of a countenance is 
building it up, feature after feature, from the 
slight outline to the finished portrait. 

I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we 

learn to look upon our bodies more and more as 
a temporary possession, and less and less as iden- 
tified with ourselves. In early years, while the 



244 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

child " feels its life in every limb," it lives in the 
body and for the body to a very great extent. It 
ought to be so. There have been many very in- 
teresting children who have shown a wonderful 
indifference to the things of earth and an extraor- 
dinary development of the spiritual nature. There 
is a perfect literature of their biographies, all alike 
in their essentials ; the same " disinclination to the 
usual amusements of childhood " ; the same re- 
markable sensibility ; the same docility ; the same 
conscientiousness ; in short, an almost uniform 
character, marked by beautiful traits, which we 
look at with a painful admiration. It will be 
found that most of these children are the subjects 
of some constitutional unfitness for living, the 
most frequent of which I need not mention. 
They are like the beautiful, blushing, half-grown 
fruit that falls before its time because its core is 
gnawed out. They have their meaning, — they do 
not live in vain, — but they are windfalls. I am 
convinced that many healthy children are injured 
morally by being forced to read too much about 
these little meek sufferers and their spiritual exer- 
cises. (Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, 
kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, 
fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, 
blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, 
read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sail- 
or, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 245 

cakes and candies, crack nats with his back teeth 
and bite out the better part of another boy's 
apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" 
knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, 
set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, " cut behind " 
anything on wheels or runners, whistle through 
his teeth, " holler " Fire ! on slight evidence, run 
after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in 
his own words, " blow for tub No. 11," or what- 
ever it may be ; -4- isn't that a pretty nice sort of 
a boy, though he has not got anything the matter 
with him that takes the taste of this world out? 
Now, when you put into such a hot-blooded, 
hard-fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's hand a 
sad-looking volume or pamphlet, with the portrait 
of a thin, white-faced child, whose life is really as 
much a training for death as the last month of a 
condemned criminal's existence, what does he find 
in common between his own overflowing and 
exulting sense of vitality and the experiences of 
the doomed offspring of invalid parents ? The 
time comes when we have learned to understand 
the music of sorrow, the beauty of resigned suf- 
fering, the holy light that plays over the pillow 
of those who die before their time, in humble 
hope anil trust. But it is not until he has worked 
his way through the period of honest hearty ani- 
mal existence, which every robust child should 
m.ake the most of, — not until he has learned the 



246 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

US8 of his various faculties, which is his first duty 
— that a boy of courage and animal vigor is in a 
proper state to read these tearful records of pre- 
mature decay. I have no doubt that disgust is 
implanted in the minds of many healthy children 
by early surfeits of pathological piety. I do verily 
believe that He who took children in His arms 
and blessed them loved the healthiest and most 
playful of them just as w^ell as those who were 
richest in the tuberculous virtues. I know what 
I am talking about, and there are more parents in 
this country who will be willing to listen to what 
I say than there are fools to pick a quarrel with 
me. In the sensibility and the sanctity which 
often accompany premature decay I see one of 
the most beautiful instances of the principle of 
compensation which marks the Divine benevo- 
lence. But to get the spiritual hygiene of robust 
natures out of the exceptional regimen of invalids 
is just simply what we Professors call "bad prac- 
tice " ; and I know by experience that there are 
worthy people who not only try it on their own 
children, but actually force it on those of their 
neighbors. 

Having been photographed, and stereo- 
graphed, and chromatographed, or done in colors, 
in only remained to be phrenologized. A polite 
note from Messrs. Bumpus and Crane, requesting 
our attendance at their Physiological Emporium, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 247 

was too tempting to be resisted. We repaired to 
that scientific Golgotha. 

Messrs. Bampus and Crane are arranged on the 
plan of the man and the woman in the toy called 
a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm 
suspended on a pivot, — so that when one comes 
to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice 
versd. The more particular speciality of one is to 
lubricate your entrance and exit, — that of the 
other to polish you off phrenologically in the re- 
cesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in 
a room full of casts and pictures, before a counter- 
full of books with taking titles. I wonder if the 
picture of the brain is there, " approved " by a 
noted Phrenologist, which was copied from mi/, 
the Professor's, folio plate in the work of Gall 
and Spurzheim. An extra convolution. No. 9, De- 
structiveness, according to the list beneath, which 
was not to be seen in the plate, itself a copy of 
Nature, was very liberally supplied by the artist, 
to meet the wants of the catalogue of " organs." 
Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of 
women, — horn-combers and gold-beaders, or some- 
where about that range of life, — looking so credu- 
lous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe 
Smith should come along, he could string the 
whole lot of them on his cheapest lie, as a boy / 
strings a dozen " shiners " on a stripped twig of > 
willow. 



248 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The Professor (meaning ourselves) is in a hurry, 
as usual; let the horn-combers wait, — he shall be 
bumped without inspecting the antechamber. 

Tape round the head, — 22 inches. (Come on, 
old 23 inches, if you think you are the better 
man! ) 

Feels thorax and arm, and nuzzles round among 
muscles as those horrid old women poke their 
fingers into the salt-meat on the provision-stalls 
at the Quincy Market. Vitality, No. 5 or 6, or 
something or other. Victualiti/, (organ at epigas- 
trium,) some other number equally significant. 

Mild champooing of head now commences. Ex- 
traordinary revelations! Cupidiphilous, 6! Hyme- 
niphilous, 6-}-! PaBdiphilous, 5! Deipniphilous, 6! 
Gelasmiphilous, 6 ! Musikiphilous, 5 ! Uraniphi- 
lous, 5 ! Glossiphilous, 8 ! ! and so on. Meant for 
a linguist. — Invaluable information. Will invest 
in ' grammars and dictionaries immediately. — I 
have nothing against the grand total of my 
phrenological endowments. 

I never set great store by my head, and did not 
think Messrs. Bumpus and Crane would give me 
so good a lot of organs as they did, especially 
considering that I was a dead-hecid on that occa- 
sion. Much obliged to them for their politeness. 
They have been useful in their way by calling at- 
tention to important physiological facts. (This con- 
cession is due to our immense bump of Candor.) 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 249 

A short Lecture on Phrenology^ read to the Board' 
ers at our Breakfast- Table. 

I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of 
a Pseudo-science, A Pseudo-science consists of 
a nomenclature^ with a self-adjusting arrangement, 
by which all positive evidence, or such as favors 
its doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evi- 
dence, or such as tells against it, is excluded. It 
is invariably connected with some lucrative practi- 
cal application. Its professors and practitioners 
are usually shrewd people; they are very serious 
with the public, but wink and laugh a good deal 
among themselves. The believing multitude con- 
sists of women of both sexes, feeble-minded in- 
quirers, poetical optimists, people who always get 
cheated in buying horses, philanthropists who in- 
sist on hurrying up the millennium, and others of 
this class, with here and there a clergyman, less 
frequently a lawyer, very rarely a physician, and 
almost never a horse-jockey or a member of the 
detective police. — I did not say that Phrenology 
was one of the Pseudo-sciences. 

A Pseudo-science does not necessarily consist 
wholly of lies. It may contain many truths, and 
even valuable ones. The rottenest bank starts 
with a little specie. It puts out a thousand prom- 
ises to pay on the strength of a single dollar, but 

the dollar is very commonly a good one. The 
11* 



250 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

practitioners of the Pseudo-sciences know that 
common minds, after they have been baited with 
a reaL fact or two, will jump at the merest rag 
of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we 
have one fact found us, we are very apt to supply 
the next out of our own imagination. (How 
many persons can read Judges xv. 16 correctly 
the first time ?) The Pseudo-sciences take advan- 
tage of this. — I did not say that it was so with 
Phrenology. 

I have rarely met a sensible man who would 
not allow that there was something in Phrenology. 
A broad, high forehead, it is commonly agreed, 
promises intellect ; one that is " villanous. low " 
and has a huge hind-head back of it, is wont to 
mark an animal nature. I have as rarely met an 
unbiassed and sensible man who really believed in 
the bumps. It is observed, however, that persons 
with what the Phrenologists call " good heads " 
are more prone than others toward plenary belief 
in the doctrine. 

It is so hard to prove a negative, that, if a 
man should assert that the moon was in truth a 
green cheese, formed by the coagulable substance 
of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the 
contrary, I might be puzzled. But if he offer to 
sell me a ton of this lunar cheese, I call on him 
to prove the truth of the caseous nature of our 
satellite, before I purchase. 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 251 

It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the 
phrenological statement. It is only necessary to 
show that its truth is not proved, and cannot be, 
by the common course of argument. The walls 
of the head are double, with a great air-chamber 
between them, over the smallest and most closely 
crowded " organs." Can you tell how much 
money there is in a safe, which also has thick 
double walls, by kneading its knobs with your 
fingers? So when a man fumbles about my fore- 
head, and talks about the organs of Individual' 
ity, Size, etc., I trust him as much as I should 
if he felt of the outside of my strong-box and 
told me that there was a five-dollar or a ten- 
dollar-bill under this or that particular rivet. Per- 
haps there is; only he doesrCt know anything about 
it. But this is a point that I, the Professor, 
understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, bet- 
ter than you do. The next argument you will all 
appreciate. 

I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting 
mechanism of Phrenology, which is very similar 
to that of the Pseudo-sciences. An example will 
show it most conveniently. 

A. is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and 
Crane examine him and find a good-sized organ 
of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for Phrenology. 
Casts and drawings of A. are multiplied, and the 
bump does not lose in the act of copying. — I did 



252 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

not say it gained. — What do you look so for ? 
(to the boarders.) 

Presently B. turns up, a bigger thief than A. 
But B. has no bump at all over Acquisitiveness. 
Negative fact; goes against Phrenology. — Not a 
bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientious- 
ness is? ThaVs the reason B. stole. 

And then comes C, ten times as much a thief 
as either A. or B., — used to steal before he was 
weaned, and would pick one of his own pockets 
and put its contents in another, if he could find 
no other way of committing petty larceny. Un- 
fortunately, C. has a hollow^ instead of a bump, 
over Acquisitiveness. Ah, but just look and see 
what a bump of Alimentiveness I Did not C. buy 
nuts and gingerbread, when a boy, with the money 
he stole ? Of course you see why he is a thief, 
and how his example confirms our noble science. 

At last comes along a case which is apparently 
a settler^ for there is a little brain with vast and 
varied powers, — a case like that of Byron, for in- 
stance. Then comes out the grand reserve-reason 
which covers everything and renders it simply im- 
possible ever to corner a Phrenologist. " It is not 
the size alone, but the quality of an organ, which 
determines its degree of power." 

Oh ! oh ! I see. — The argument may be briefly 
stated thus by the Phrenologist; "Heads I win, 
tails you lose." Well, that's convenient. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 253 

It must be confessed that Phrenology has a cer- 
tain resemblance to the Pseudo-sciences. I did 
not say it v/as a Pseudo-science. 

I have often met persons who have been alto- 
gether struck up and amazed at the accuracy with 
which some wandering Professor of Phrenology 
had read their characters written upon their skulls. 
Of course the Professor acquires his information 
solely through his cranial inspections and manip- 
ulations. — What are you laughing at? (to the 
boarders). — But let us just suppose^ for a mo- 
ment, that a tolerably cunning fellow, who did 
not know or care anything about Phrenology, 
should open a shop and undertake to read off 
people's characters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. 
Let us see how well he could get along without 
the " organs." 

I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I 
would invest one hundred dollars, more or less, in 
casts of brains, skulls, charts, and other matters 
that would make the most show for the money. 
That would do to begin with. I would then ad- 
vertise myself as the celebrated Professor Brainey, 
Dr whatever name I might choose, and wait for 
my first customer. My first customer is a middle- 
aged man. I look at him, — ask him a question 
or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have 
got the hang of him, I ask him to sit down, 
and proceed to fumble his skull, dictating as fol- 
lows : — 



254 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



SCALE FROM 1 TO 10. 

List of Faculties for Customer. Private Notes for my Pupil: 

JSach to be accompanied with a wink. 

Amativeness, 7. Most men love the conflicting 

sex, and all men love to be told 
they do. 

Alimentiveness, 8. Don't you see that he has 

burst off his lowest waistcoat- 
button with feeding, — hey ? 

Acquisitiveness, 8. Of course. A middle-aged 

Yankee. 

ApprobatiuenesSf 7.-f- Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. 
Mark the effect of that plus 
sign. 

Self-esteem, 6. His face shows that. 

Benevolence, 9. That'll please him. 

Conscientiousness, 8^. That fraction looks first-rate. 

Mirthfulness, 7. Has laughed twice since he 

came in. 

Ideality, 9. That sounds well. 

Form, Size, Weight, Color, ^ , . a \ ^x.- 

Tr.lr.iu-,. 17 ,^^ .Ivt.. / ( 4 to 6. Average everything 

be guessed. 



brm, Size, Weight, Color, ^ . . ^ a 
7- ,• T- 7- ' / 4 to 6. Av( 

Locahty, Eventuality, etc.,)- ^^^^ ^^^.^ 

etc., ) 

And so of the other faculties. 

Of course, you know, that isn't the way the 
Phrenologists do. They go only by the bumps. — 
What do you keep laughing so for? (to the board- 
ers.) I only said that is the way I should practise 
" Phrenology " for a living. 

End of my Lecture, 



" I 

1 

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 255 I 

The Reformers have good heads, generally. ! 

Their faces are commonly serene enough, and they j 

are lambs in private intercourse, even though their J 

voices may be like | 

The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore, j 

when heard from the platform. Their greatest ' 

spiritual danger is from the perpetual flattery of 
abuse to which they are exposed. These lines are 
meant to caution them. 



SAINT ANTHONY THE REFORMER. 

HIS TEMPTATION. 

No fear lest praise should make us proud I 
AVe know how cheaply that is won; 

The idle homage of the crowd 
Is proof of tasks as idly done. 

A surface-smile may pay the toll 

That follows still the conquering Right, 

With soft, white hands to dress the spoil 
That sunbrowned valor clutched in fight. 

Sing the sweet song of other days, 

Serenely placid, safely true, 
And o'er the present's parching ways 

Thy verse distils like evening dew. 

But speak in words of living power, — 
They fall lik^e drQps of scajding rain 



256 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

That plashed before the burning shower 
Swept o'er the cities of the plain I 

Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale, — 
Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, 

And, smitten through their leprous mail, 
Strike right and left in hope to sting. 

If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath, 
Thy feet on earth, thy heart above. 

Canst walk in peace thy kingly path, 
Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love, — 

Too kind for bitter words to grieve. 
Too firm for clamor to dismay. 

When Faith forbids thee to believe, 
And Meekness calls to disobey, — 

Ah, then beware of mortal pride ! 

The smiling pride that calmly scorns 
Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed 

In laboring on thy crown of thorns ! 



IX. 



One of our boarders — perhaps more than one 
was concerned in it — sent in some questions to 
me, the other day, which, trivial as some of them 
are, I felt bound to answer. 

1. — Whether a lady was ever known to write 
a letter covering only a single page ? 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 257 

To this I answered, that there was a case on 
record where a lady had but half a sheet of paper 
and no envelope ; and being obliged to send 
through the post-office, she covered only one side 
of the paper (crosswise, lengthwise, and diago- 
nally). 

2. — What constitutes a man a gentleman? 

To this I gave several answers, adapted to par- 
ticular classes of questioners. 

a. Not trying to be a gentleman. 

b. Self-respect underlying courtesy. 

c. Knowledge and observance of the fitness of 
things in social intercourse. 

d. £. s. d. (as many suppose.) 

3. — Whether face or figure is most attractive 
in the female sex? 

Answered in the following epigram, by a young 
man about town : — 

« 
Quoth Tom, " Though fair her features be, . 
It is her figure pleases me." 
I " What may her figure be ? " I cried. 

" One hundred thousand!" he replied. 

When this was read to the boarders, the young 
man John said he should like a chance to "step 
up" to a figger of that kind, if the girl was' one 
of the right sort. 

The landlady said them that merried for money 
didn't deserve the blessin' of a good wife. Money 



258 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was a great thing when them that had it made a 
good use of it. She had seen better days herself, 
and knew what it was never to want for any- 
thing. One of her cousins merried a very rich old 
gentleman, and she had heerd that he said he 
lived ten year longer than if he'd staid by him- 
self without anybody to take care of him. There 
was nothin' like a wife for nussin' sick folks and 
them that couldn't take care of themselves. 

The young man John got off a little wink, and 
pointed slyly with his thumb in the direction of 
our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to 
think this speech was intended. 

If it was meant for him, he didn't appear to 
know that it was. Indeed, he seems somewhat 
listless of late, except when the conversation falls 
upon one of those larger topics that specially in- 
terest him, and then he grows excited, speaks loud 
arxl fast, sometimes almost savagely, — and, I have 
noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his 
right side, as if there were something that ached, 
or weighed, or throbbed in that region. 

While he speaks in this way, the general con- 
versation is interrupted, and we all listen to him. 
Iris looks steadily in his face, and then he will 
turii as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes 
with his own melancholy gaze. I do believe that 
they have some kind of understanding together, 
that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and 



THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 259 

that there is a mystery, which is going to break 
upon us all of a sudden, involving the relations 
of these two persons. From the very first, they 
have taken to each other. The one thing they 
have in common is the heroic will. In him, it 
shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, 
in doing battle for " free trade and no right of 
search" on the high seas of religious controversy, 
and especially in fighting the battles of his crook- 
ed old city. In her, it is standing up for her little 
friend with the most queenly disregard of the code 
of boarding-house etiquette. People may say or 
look what they like, — she will have her way 
about this sentiment of hers. 

The Poor Relation is in a dreadful fidget when- 
ever the Little Gentleman says anything that in- 
terferes with her own infallibility. She seems to 
think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if 
she had the toothache, — and that if she opens 
her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, 
she will catch her " death o' cold." 

The landlady herself came to him one day, as 
I have found out, and tried to persuade him to 
hold his tongue. — The boarders was gettin' un- 
easy, — she said, — and some of 'em would go, 
she mistrusted, if he talked any more about things 
that belonged to the ministers to settle. She was 
a poor woman, that had known better days, but 
all her livin' depended on her boarders, and she 



260 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was sure there wasn't any of 'em she set so much 
by as she did by him ; but there was them that 
never liked to hear about sech things, except on 
Sundays. 

The Little Gentleman looked very smiling at 
the. landlady, who smiled even more cordially in 
return, and adjusted her cap-ribbon with an un- 
conscious movement, — a reminiscence of the long- 
past pairing- time, when she had smoothed her 
locks and softened her voice, and won her mate 
by these and other bird-like graces. — My dear 
Madam, — he said, — I will remember your in- 
terests, and speak only of matters to which I am 
totally indifferent. — I don't doubt he meant this; 
but a day or two after, something stirred him 
up, and I heard his voice uttering itself aloud, 
thus : — 

It must be done. Sir ! — he was saying, — 

it must be done! Onr religion has been Judaized, 
it has been Romanized, it has been Orientalized, 
it has been Anglicized, and the time is at hand 
when it must be Americanized ! Now, Sir, you 
see what Americanizing is in politics; — it means 
that a man shall have a vote because he is a 
man, — and shall vote for whom he pleases, with- 
out his neighbor's interference. If he chooses to 
vote for the Devil, that is his lookout ; — perhaps 
he thinks the Devil is better than the other candi- 
dates; and I don't doubt he's often right, Sir! 



THE PROFESSOR AT TfiE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 261 

Just SO a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual 
community; and it doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do 
long, to call him " schismatic " and " heretic " and 
those other wicked names that the old murderous 
Inquisitors have left us to help along " peace and 
good-will to men " I 

As long as you conld catch a man and drop 
him into an oubliette, or pull him out a few 
inches longer by machinery, or put a hot iron 
through his tongue, or make him climb up a lad- 
der and sit on a board at the top of a stake so 
that he should be slowly broiled by the fire 
kindled round it, there was some sense in these 
words; they led to something. But since we have 
done with those tools, we had better give up 
those words. I should like to see a Yankee ad- 
vertisement like this! — (the Little Gentleman 
laughed fiercely as he uttered the words, — ) 

Patent thumb-screws, — will crush the bone 

in three turns. 

The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet, 

— only five dollars ! 

The celebrated extension-rack, warranted to 

stretch a man six inches in twenty minutes, — 
money returned, if it proves unsatisfactory. 

I should like to see such an advertisement, I 
say, Sir! Now, what's the use of using the words 
that belonged with the thumb-screws, and the 
Blessed Virgin with the knives under her petti- 



262 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

coats and sleeves and bodice, and the dry pan and 
gradual fire^ if we can't have the things them- 
selves, Sir? What's the use of painting' the fire 
round a poor fellow, when you think it won't do 
to kindle one under him, — as they did at Valen- 
cia or Valladolid, or wherever it was? 

What story is that? — I said. 

Why, — he answered, — at the last auto-da-fe^ in 
1824 or '5, or somewhere there, — it's a travel- 
ler's story, but a mighty knowing traveller he is, 
— they had a " heretic " to use up according to 
the statutes provided for the crime of private 
opinion. They couldn't quite, make up their 
minds to burn him, so they only hung him in a 
hogshead painted all over with flames! 

No, Sir! when a man calls you names because 
you go to the ballot-box and vote for your candi- 
date, or because you say this or that is your 
opinion, he forgets in which half of the world he 
was born. Sir! It won't be long, Sir, before we 
have Americanized religion as we have American- 
ized government ; and then, Sir, every soul God 
sends into the world will be good in the face of 
all men for just so much of His "inspiration" as 
" giveth him understanding"! — None of my words, 
Sir! none of my words! 

If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, 

what does love look like when one sees it? She 
follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 263 

him when he speaks, her face# changes with the 
changes of his speech, so that one might think it 
was with her as with Christabel, — 

That all her features were resigned 
To this sole image in her mind. 

But she never looks at him with such intensity 
of devotion as when he says anything about the 
soul and the soul's atmosphere, religion. 

Women are twice as religious as men; — all 
the world knows that. Whether they are any 
better^ in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be 
questioned ; for the additional religious element 
supplied by sex hardly seems to be a matter of 
praise or blame. But in all common aspects they 
are so much above us that we get most of our 
religion from them, — from their teachings, from 
their example, — above all, from their pure affec- 
tions. 

Now this poor little Iris had been talked to 
strangely in her childhood. Especially she had 
been told that she hated all good things, — which 
every sensible parent knows well enough is not 
true of a great many children, to say the least. I 
have sometimes questioned whether many libels 
on human nature had not been a natural con- 
sequence of the celibacy of the clergy, which was 
enforced for so long a period. 

The child had met this and some other equally 



264 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

encouraging statements as to her spiritual condi- 
tions, early in life, and fought the battle of spirit- 
ual independence prematurely, as many children 
do. If all she did was hateful to God, what 
was the meaning of the approving or else the 
disapproving conscience, when she had done 
"right" or "wrong"? No "shoulder-striker" hits 
out straighter than a child with its logic. Why, 
I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery 
and settling questions which all that I have heard 
since and got out of books has never been able 
to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in 
this way in good season, it becomes just what its 
parents or teachers were, and is no better than a 
plaster image. — How old was I at the time ? — 
I suppose about 5823 years old, — that is, count- 
ing from Archbishop Usher's date of the Creation, 
and adding the life of the race, whose accumu- 
lated intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to 
my own. A good deal older than Plato, you see, 
and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon 
and most of the world's teachers. — Old books, as 
you well know, are books of the world's youth, 
and new books are fruits of its age. How many 
of all these ancient folios round me are like so 
many old cupels! The gold has passed out of 
them long ago, but their pores are full of the 
dross with which it was mingled. 

And so Iris — having thrown off that first lasso, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 265 

which not only fetters, but chokes those whom it 
can 'hold, so that they give themselves up trem- 
bling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who 
has them by the windpipe — had settled a brief 
creed for herself, in which love of the neighbor, 
whom we have seen, was the first article, and 
love of the Creator, whom we have not seen, 
grew out of this as its natural development, being 
necessarily second in order of time to the first un- 
selfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-crea- 
tures who surround us in our early years. 

The child must have some place of worship. 
"What would a young girl be who never mingled 
her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all 
around her with every returning day of rest? And 
Iris was free to choose. Sometimes one and 
sometimes another would offer to carry her to this 
or that place of worship ; and when the doors 
were hospitably opened, she would often go meek- 
ly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two 
churches as remote from each other in doctrine as 
could well be divided her affections. 

The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much 
the look of a Roman Catholic chapel. I do not 
wish to run the risk of giving names to the eccle- 
siastical furniture which gave it such a Romish 
aspect; but there were pictures, and inscriptions 
in antiquated characters, and there were reading- 
stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant 

12 



266 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

arrangements. Then there were boys to sing al- 
ternately in choirs responsive to each other, and 
there was much bowing, wuth very loud respond- 
ing, and a long service and a short sermon, and a 
bag, such as Judas used to hold in the old pic- 
tures, was carried round to receive contributions. 
Everything was done not only " decently and in 
order," but, perhaps one might say, with a certain 
air of magnifying their office on the part of the 
dignified clergymen, often two or three in number. 
The music and the free welcome were grateful to 
Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of 
the chapel. For this was a church with open 
doors, with seats for all classes and all colors 
alike, — a church of zealous worshippers after their 
faith, of charitable and serviceable men and wom- 
en, one that took care of its children and never 
forgot its poor, and whose people were much more 
occupied in looking out for their own souls than 
in attacking the faith of their neighbors. In its 
mode of worship there was a union of two quali- 
ties, — the taste and refinement, which the edu- 
cated require just as much in their churches as 
elsewhere, and the air of stateliness, almost of 
pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, 
and is often not without its effect upon those who 
think they hold outward forms as of little value. 
Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of 
Saint Polycarp, the young girl found a devout 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 267 , 

and loving and singularly cheerful religious spirit. 
The artistic sense, which betrayed itself in the 
dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with 
her taste. The mingled murmur of the loud re- 
sponses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet 
so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, in- 
stead of its dull tic4ac^ articulated itself as " Good 
Lord, deliver us ! " — the sweet alternation of the 
two choirs, as iheir holy song floated from side to 
side, — the keen young voices rising like a flight 
of singing-birds that passes from one grove to 
another, carrying its music with it back and for- 
ward, — why should she not love these gracious 
outward signs of those inner harmonies which 
none could deny made beautiful the lives of many 
of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not 
inelegant Chapel of Saint Polycarp? 

The young Marylander, who was born and bred 
to that mode of worship, had introduced her to 
the chapel, for which he did the honors for such 
of our boarders as were not otherwise provided 
for. I saw them looking over the same prayer- 
book one Sunday, and I could not help think- 
ing that two such young and handsome persons 
could hardly worship together in safety for a great 
while. But they seemed to mind nothing but 
their prayer-book. By-and-by the silken bag was 
handed round. — I don't believe she will; — so 
awkward, you know; — besides, she only came by 



268 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

invitation. There she is, with her hand in her 
pocket, though, — and sure enough, her little bit 
of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. 
God bless her I she hasn't much to give ; but her 
eye glistens when she gives it, and that is all 
Heaven asks. — That was the first time I noticed 
these young people together, and I am sure they 
behaved with the most charming propriety, — in 
fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders 
with them, whose eyes would have kept Cupid 
and Psyche to their good behavior. A day or two 
after this I noticed that the young gentleman had 
left his seat, which you may remember was at the 
corner diagonal to that of Iris, so that they have 
been as far removed from each other as they 
could be at the table. His new seat is three or 
four places farther down the table. Of course I 
made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid 
not to see it! How could it be otherwise? — Did 
you speak, Madam? I beg your pardon. (To 
my lady-reader.) 

I never saw anything like the tenderness with 
which this young girl treats her little deformed 
neighbor. If he were in the way of going to 
church, I know she would follow him. But his 
worship, if any, is not with the throng of men 
and women and staring children. 

Ij the Professor, on the other hand, am a reg- 
ular church-goer. I should go for various reasons, 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 269 

if I did not love it ; but I am happy enongh to 
find great pleasure in the midst of devout multi- 
tudes, whether I can accept all their creeds or not. 
One place* of worship comes nearer than the rest 
to my ideal standard, and to this it was that I 
carried our young girl. 

The Church of the Galileans, as it is called, is 
even humbler in outside pretensions than the 
Church of Saint Polycarp. Like that, it is open 
to all comers. The stranger who approaches it 
looks down a quiet street and sees the plainest 
of chapels, — a kind of wooden tent, that owes 
whatever grace it has to its pointed windows and 
the high, sharp roof, — traces, both, of that up- 
ward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which 
soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the 
sky as the spike of a flowering aloe from the 
cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below. This 
suggestion of mediaeval symbolism, aided by a 
minute turret in which a hand-bell might have 
hung and found just room enough to turn over, 
was all of outward show the small edifice could 
boast. Within there was very little that pretended 
to be attractive. A small organ at one side, and 
a plain pulpit, showed that the building Avas a 
church ; but it was a church reduced to its sim- 
plest expression. 

Yet when the great and wise monarch of the 
East sat upon his throne, in all the golden blaze 



270 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of the spoils of Ophir and the freights of the navy 
of Tarshish, his glory was not like that of this 
simple chapel in its Sunday garniture. For the 
lilies of the field, in their season, and the fairest 
flowers of the year, in due succession, were clus- 
tered every Sunday morning over the preacher*3 
desk. Slight, thin-tissued blossoms of pink and 
blue and virgin white in early spring, then the 
full-breasted and deep-hearted roses of summer, 
then the velvet-robed crimson and yellow flowers 
of autumn, and in the winter delicate exotics that 
grew under skies of glass in the false summers of 
our crystal palaces without knowing that it was 
the dreadful winter of New England which was 
rattling the doors and frosting the panes, — in their 
language the whole year told its history of life and 
growth and beauty from that simple desk. There 
was always at least one good sermon, — this floral 
homily. There was at least one good prayer, — 
that brief space when all were silent, after the 
manner of the Friends at their devotions. 

Here, too, Iris found an atmosphere of peace 
and love. The same gentle, thoughtful faces, the 
same cheerful but reverential spirit, the same quiet, 
the same life of active benevolence. But in all 
else how different from the Church of Saint Poly- 
carp! No clerical costume, no ceremonial forms, 
no carefully trained choirs. A liturgy they have, 
to be sure, which does not scruple to borrow from 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 271 

the time-honored manuals of devotion, but also 
does not hesitate to change its expressions to its 
own liking. 

Perhaps the good people seem a little easy with 
each other ; — they are apt to nod familiarly, and 
have even been known to whisper before the min- 
ister came in. But it is a relief to get rid of that 
old Sunday — no, — Sabbath face, which suggests 
the idea that the first day of the week is com- 
memorative of some most mournful event. The 
truth is, these brethren and sisters meet very much 
as a family does for its devotions, not putting off 
their humanity in the least, considering it on the 
whole quite a delightful matter to come together 
for prayer and song and good counsel from kind 
and wise lips. And if they are freer in their 
demeanor than some very precise congregations, 
they have not the air of a worldly set of people. 
Clearly they have not come to advertise their tail- 
ors and milliners, nor for the sake of exchanging 
criticisms on the literary character of the sermon 
they may hear. There is no restlessness and no 
restraint among these quiet, cheerful worshippers. 
One thing that keeps them calm and happy dur- 
ing the season so evidently trying to many con- 
gi'egations is, that they join very generally in the 
singing. In this way they get rid of that ac- 
cumulated nervous force which escapes in all sorts 
of fidgety movements, so that a minister trying to 



272 THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

keep his congregalion still reminds one of a boy" 
with his hand over the nose of a pump which 
another boy is working, — this spirting impatience 
of the people is so like the jets that find their 
way through his fingers, and the grand rush out 
at the final Amen! has such a wonderful likeness 
to the gush that takes place when the boy pulls 
his hand away, with immense relief, as it seems, 
to both the pump and the officiating youngster. 

How sweet is this blending of all voices and 
all hearts in one common song of praise! Some 
will sing a little loud, perhaps, — and now and 
then an impatient chorister will get a syllable or 
two in advance, or an enchanted singer so lose all 
thought of time and place in the luxury of a 
closing cadence that he holds on to the last semi- 
breve upon his private responsibility ; but how 
much more of the spirit of the old Psalmist in 
the music of these imperfectly trained voices than 
in the academic niceties of the paid performers 
who take our musical worship out of our hands ! 

I am of the opinion that the creed of the 
Church of the Galileans is not laid down in as 
many details as that of the Church of Saint Poly- 
carp. Yet I suspect, if one of the good people 
from each of those churches had met over the bed 
of a suffering fellow-creature, or for the promotion 
of any charitable object, they would have found 
they had more in common than all the special 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 273 

beliefs or want of beliefs that separated them 
would amount to. There are always many who 
believe that the fruits of a tree afford a better 
test of its condition than a statement of the com- 
posts with which it is dressed, — though the last 
has its meaning and importance, no doubt. 

Between these two churches, then, our young 
Iris divides her affections. But I doubt if she 
listens to the preacher at either with more devo- 
tion than she does to her little neighbor when he 
talks of these matters. 

What does he believe ? In the first place, there 
is some deep-rooted disquiet lying at the bottom 
of his soul, which makes him very bitter against 
all kinds of usurpation over the right of private 
judgment. Over this seems to lie a certain ten- 
derness for humanity in general, bred out of life- 
long trial, I should say, but sharply streaked with 
fiery lines of wrath at various individual acts of 
wrong, especially if they come in an ecclesi- 
astical shape, and recaU to him the days when 
his mother's great-grandmother was strangled on 
Witch Hill, with a text from the Old Testament 
for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless 
belief in the future of this experimental hemi- 
sphere, and especially in the destiny of the free 
thought of its northeastern metropolis. 

A man can see further, Sk, — he said one 

iay, — from the top of Boston State-House, and 

12* 



274 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

see more that is worth seeing, than from all the 
pyramids and turrets and steeples in all the places 
in the world ! No smoke, Sir ; no fog. Sir ; and 
a clean sweep from the Outer Light and the sea 
beyond it to the New Hampshire mountains! 
Yes, Sir, — and there are great truths that are 
higher than mountains and broader than seas, that 
people are looking for from the tops of these hills 
of ours, — such as the world never saw, though it 
might have seen them at Jerusalem, if its eyes 
had been open I — Where do they have most crazy 
people ? Tell me that, Sir ! 

I answered, that I had heard it said there were 
more in New England than in most countries, 
perhaps more than in any part of the world. 

Very good. Sir, — he answered. — When have 
there been most people killed and wounded in the 
course of this century ? 

During the wars of the French Empire, no 
doubt, — I said. 

That's it! that's it! — said the Little Gentle- 
man; — where the battle of intelligence is fought, 
there are most minds bruised and broken! We're 
battling for a faith here, Sir. 

The divinity-student remarked, that it was rather 
late in the world's history for men to be looking 
out for a new faith. 

I didn't say a new faith, — said the Little Gen- 
tleman ; — old or new, it can't help being different 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275 

here in this American mind of om^s from anything 
that ever was before ; the people are new, Sir, and 
that makes the diiference. One load of corn goes 
to the sty, and makes the fat of swine, — another 
goes to the farm-house, and becomes the muscle 
that clothes the right arms of heroes. It isn't 
where a pawn stands on the board that makes 
the difference, but what the game round it is 
when it is on this or that square. 

Can any man look round and see what Chris- 
tian countries are now doing, and how they are 
governed, and what is the general condition of 
society, without seeing that Christianity is the flag 
under which the world sails, and not the rudder 
that steers its course ? No, Sir ! There was a 
great raft built about two thousand years ago, — 
call it an ark, rather, — the world's great ark! big 
enough to hold all mankind, and made to be 
launched right out into the open waves of life, — 
and here it has been lying, one end oj?i the shore 
and one end bobbing up and down in the water, 
men fighting all the time as to who should be 
captain and who should have the state-rooms, and 
throwing each other over the side because they 
could not agree about the points of compass, but 
the great vessel never getting afloat with its freight 
of nations and their rulers ; — and now. Sir, there 
is and has been for this long time a fleet of 
'* heretic " lighters sailing out of Boston Bay and 



276 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

they have been saying, and they say now, and 
they mean to keep saying, ''Pump out your bilge- 
water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get 
out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it 
out into deep waters and sink it where it will 
never be seen again; so shall the ark of the 
world's hope float on the ocean, instead of stick- 
ing in the dock-mud where it is lying I " 

It's a slow business, this of getting the ark 
launched. The Jordan wasn't deep enough, and 
the Tiber wasn't deep enough, and the Rhone 
wasn't deep enough, and the Thames wasn't 
deep enough, — and perhaps the Charles isn't 
deep enough ; but I don't feel sure of that. Sir, 
and I love to hear the workmen knockinsr at 
the old blocks of tradition and making the ways 
smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I 
don't know. Sir, — but I do think she stirs a little, 
— I do believe she slides ; — and when I think of 
what a wojk that is for the dear old three-breasted 
mother of American liberty, I would not take all 
the glory of all the greatest cities in the world for 
my birthright in the soil of little Boston ! 

Some of us could not help smiling at this 

burst of local patriotism, especially when it fin- 
ished with the last two words. 

And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant 
smile of pleasure which always lights up her face 
when her little neighbor gets excited on the great 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAlvFAST-TABLE. 277 

topics of progress in freedom and religion, and 
especially on the part which, as he pleases him- 
self with believing, his own city is to take in that 
consummation of human development to which he 
looks forward. 

Presently she looked into his face with a changed 
expression, — the anxiety of a mother that sees her 
child suffering. 

You are not well, — she said. 

I am never well, — he answered. — His eyes fell 
mechanically on the death's-head ring he wore on 
his right hand. She took his hand as if it had 
been a baby's, and turned the grim device so that 
it should be out of sight. One slight, sad, slow 
movement of the head seemed to say, " The death- 
symbol is still there ! " 

A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to 
know what is going on, — reads books, old and 
new, — has many recent publications sent him, 
they tell me, — but, what is more curious, keeps 
up with the every-day affairs of the world, too. 
Whether he hears everything that is said with 
preternatural acuteness, or whether some confiden- 
tial friend visits him in a quiet way, is more than 
I can tell. I can make nothing more of the 
noises I hear in his room than my old conject- 
ures. The movements I mention are less fre- 
quent, but I often hear the plaintive cry, — I 
observe that it is rarely laughing of late ; — 



278 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I never have detected one articulate word, but I 
never heard such tones from anything but a hu- 
man voice. 

There has been, of late, a deference apj»roach- 
ing to tenderness, on the part of the boarders 
generally, so far as he is concerned. This is 
doubtless owing to the air of suffering which 
seems to have saddened his look of late. Either 
some passion is gnawing at him inwardly, or 
some hidden disease is at work upon him. 

What's the matter with Little Boston ? — 

said the young man John to me one day. — There 
a'n't much of him, anyhow ; but 't seems to me 
he looks peakeder than ever. The old woman 
says he's in a bad way, 'n' wants a nuss to take 
care of him. Them nusses that take care of old 
rich folks marry 'em sometimes, — 'n' they don't 
commonly live a great while after that. iVb, Sir! 
I don't see what he wants to die for, after he's 
taken so much trouble to live in such poor ac- 
commodations as that crooked body of his. I 
should like to know how his soul crawled into it, 
'n' how it's goin' to get out. What business has 
he to die, I should like to know? Let Ma'am 
Allen (the gentleman with the diamond) die, if he 
likes, and be (this is a family-magazine) ; but we 
a'n't goin' to have him dyin'. Not by a great 
sight. Can't do without him anyhow. A'n't it 
fun to hear him blow off his steam ? 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 279 

I believe the young fellow would take it a& a 
personal insult, if the Little Gentleman should 
show any symptoms of quitting our table for a 
better world. 

In the mean time, what with going to 

church in company with our young lady, and tak- 
ing every chance I could get to talk with her, I 
have found myself becoming, I will not say inti- 
mate, but well acquainted with Miss Iris. There is 
a certain frankness and directness about her that 
perhaps belong to her artist nature. For, you see, 
the one thing that marks the true artist is a clear 
perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction 
from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain 
touch which give us the feeble pietures and the 
lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or 
in stone. A true artist, therefore, can hardly fail 
to have a sharp, well-defined mental physiognomy. 
Besides this, many young girls have a strange 
audacity blended with their instinctive delicacy. 
Even in physical daring many of them are a 
match for boys; whereas you will find few among 
mature women, and especially if they are mothers, 
who do not confess, and not unfrequently pro- 
claim, their timidity. One of these young girls, 
as many of us hereabouts remember, climbed to 
the top of a jagged, slippery rock lying out in the 
waves, — an ugly height to get up, and a worse 
one to get down, even for a bold young fellow of 



280 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sixteen. Another was in the way of climbing tall 
trees for crows' nests, — and crows generally know 
about how far boys can "shin up," and set their 
household establishments above that high- water- 
mark. Still another of these young ladies I saw 
for the first time in an open boat, tossing on tlie 
ocean ground-swell, a mile or two from shore, off 
a lonely island. She lost all her daring, after she 
had some girls of her own to look out for. 

Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in charac- 
ter, impressible, unelastic. But the positive blondes, 
with the golden tint running through them, are of- 
ten full of character. They come, probably enough, 
from those deep-bosomed German women that Tac- 
itus portrayed in such strong colors. The negative 
blondes, or those women whose tints have faded 
out as their line of descent has become impover- 
ished, are of various blood, and in them the soul 
has often become pale with that blanching of the 
hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes 
them approach the character of Albinesses. 

I see in this young girl that union of strength 
and sensibility which, when directed and impelled 
by the strong instinct so apt to accompany this 
combination of active and passive capacity, we 
call genius. She is not an accomplished artist, 
certainly, as yet ; but there is always an air in 
every careless figure she draws, as it were of up- 
ward aspiration, — the elan of John of Bologna's 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 281 

Mercury, — a lift to them, as if they had on 
winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods. I 
hear her singing sometimes ; and though she evi- 
dently is not trained, yet is there a wild sweet- 
ness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melo- 
dies, — such as can come only from the inspira- 
tion of the moment, — strangely enough, remind- 
ing me of those long passages I have heard from 
my little neighbor's room, yet of different tone, 
and by no means to be mistaken for those weird 
harmonies. 

I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested 
in the girl. Alone, unprotected, as I have seen 
so many young girls left in boarding-houses, the 
centre of all the men's eyes that surround the 
table, watched with jealous sharpness by every 
woman, most of all by that poor relation of our 
landlady, who belongs to the class of women that 
like to catch others in mischief when they them- 
selves are too mature for indiscretions, (as one 
sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of Na- 
ture's gendarmerie^ clad in a complete suit of 
wrinkles, the cheapest coat-of-mail against the 
shafts of the great little enemy, — so surrounded, 
Iris spans this commonplace household-life of ours 
with her arch of beauty, as the rainbow, whose 
name she borrows, looks dov/n on a dreary pasture 
with its feeding flocks and herds of indifferent 
animals. 



282 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

These young girls that live in boarding-housea 
can do pretty much as they will. The female 
gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The sitting- 
room has its solitary moments, when any two 
boarders who wish to meet may come together 
accidentally, (aGcidental/i/, I said, Madam, and I 
had not the slighest intention of Italicizing the 
word,) and discuss the social or political questions 
of the day, or any other subject that may prove 
interesting. Many charming conversations take 
place at the foot of the stairs, or while one of the 
parties is holding the latch of a door, — in the 
shadow of porticos, and especially on those out- 
side balconies which some of our Southern neigh- 
bors call " stoops," the most charming places in 
the world when the moon is just right and the 
roses and honeysuckles are in full blow, — as we 
used to think in eighteen hundred and never men- 
tion it. 

On such a balcony or " stoop," one evening, I 
walked with Iris. We were on pretty good terms 
now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine, — 
my left arm, of course. That leaves one's right 
arm free to defend the lovely creature, if the rival 
— odious wretch I — attempt to ravish her from 
your side. Likewise if one's heart should happen 
to beat a little, its mute language will not be 
without its meaning, as you will perceive when 
the arm you hold begins to tremble, — a circum- 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283 

Stance like to occur, if you happen to be a good- 
looking young fellow, and you two have the 
" stoop " to yourselves. 

We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh- 
i-noor, as we called him, was in a corner with 
our landlady's daughter. The young fellow John 
was smoking out in the yard. The gendarme was 
afraid of the evening air, and kept inside. The 
young Marylander came to the door, looked out 
and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull 
over his forehead and stalked off. I felt a slight 
spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the 
girl's head turn over her shoulder for a second. 
What a kind creature this is! She has no special 
interest in this youth, but she does not like to see 
a young fellow going off because he feels as if he 
were not wanted. 

She had her locked drawing-book under her 
arm. — Let me take it, — I said. 

She gave it to me to carry. 

This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am 
sure, — said I. 

She laughed, and said, — No, — not all of you. 

I was there, of course ? 

Why, no, — she had never taken so much pains 
with me. 

Then she would let me see the inside of it? 

She would think of it. 

Just as we parted, she took a little key from 



234 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

her pocket and handed it to me. — This unlocks 
my naughty book, — she said, — you shall see it. 
I am not afraid of yon. 

I don't know whether the last words exactly 
pleased me. At any rate, I took the book and 
hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and 
saw, in a few glances, that I held the heart of 
Iris in my hand. 

1 have no verses for you this month, ex- 
cept these few lines suggested by the season. 



MIDSUMMER. 

Here ! sweep these foolish leaves away, — 
I will not crush my brains to-day! — 
Look! arc the southern curtains drawn? 
Fetch me a fan, and so begone ! 

Not that, — the palm-tree's rustling leaf 
Brought from a parching coral-rc(^! 
Its breath is heated; — I would swing 
The broad gray plumes, — the eagle's wing. 

I hate these roses' feverish blood ! — 
Pluck me a half-blown lily-buti, 
A long-stemmed lily from the lake, 
Cold as a coiling water-snake. 

Rain me sweet odors on the air, 
And wheel me up my Indian chair, 



THE rROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 285 

And spread some book not ovcrwise 
Flat out before my sleepy eyes. 

— Who kno->vs it not, — this dead recoil 
Of weary fibres' stretched with toil, — 
The pulse that flutters fahit and low 
When Summer's seething breezes blow? 

O Nature ! bare thy loving breast 
And give thy child one hour of rest, — 
One little hour to lie unseen 
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green I 

So, curtained by a singing pine, 

Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, 

Till, lost in dreams, my fiiltering lay 

In sweeter music dies away. 



X. 

jFn0, Ijcr Book. 

I PRAY thee by the soul of her that bore thee, 
By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee, 
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee I 

For Iris had no mother to infold her, 

Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder. 

Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her. 

She had not learned the mystery of awaking 
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching. 
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking. 



386 THE PROFESSOR AT TEIl fiREAKFAST-TABLE. 

scious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry, — 
the only utterance of her long agony. 

Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the 
iron gates of the Copp's Hill burial-ground. You 
love to stroll round among the gra^^s that crowd 
each other in the thickly peopled soil of that 
breezy summit. You love to lean on the free- 
stone slab which lies over the bones of the 
Mathers, — to read the epitaph of stout Wil- 
liam Clark, "Despiser of Sorry Persons and little 
Actions," — to stand by the stone grave of sturdy 
Daniel Malcolm and look upon the splintered slab 
that tells the old rebel's story, — to kneel by the 
triple stone that says how the three Worthylakes, 
father, mother, and young daughter, died on the 
same day and lie buried there ; a mystery ; the 
subject of a moving ballad, by the late Benjamin 
Franklin, — as may be seen in his autobio- 
graphy, which will explain the secret of the triple 
gravestone; though the old philosopher has made 
a mistake, unless the stone is wrong. 

Not very far from that you will find a fair 
mound, of dimensions fit to hold a well-grown 
man. I will not tell you the inscription upon the 
stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish 
you to be sure of the resting-place of one who 
could not bear to think that he should be known 
as a cripple amonff the dead, after being pointed 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 387 

at SO long among the living. There is one sign, 
it is true, by whicli, if you have been a sagacious 
reader of these papers, you will at once know it; 
but I fear you read carelessly, and must study 
them more diligently before you will detect the 
hint to which I allude. 

The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to 
lie, among the old names and the old bones of 
the old Boston people. At the foot of his resting- 
place is the river, alive with the wings and anten- 
nae of its colossal water-insects; over opposite are 
the great war-ships, and the heavy guns, which, 
when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies ; 
and in the steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are 
the sweet chimes which are the Boston boy's 
Ranz des Vaches, whose echoes follow him all the 
world over. 

In Pace! 

I told you a good while ago that the Little 
Gentleman could not do a better thing than to 
cave all his money, whatever it might be, to the 
young girl who has since that established such a 
claim upon him. He did not, however. A con- 
siderable bequest to one of our pubhc institutions 
keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The 
telescope through which he was fond of watching 
the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which 
had been the source of such odd fancies on my 



288 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals. 
but which I cannot look at in the light of day 
"without a feeling of wronging a sacred confi- 
dence ? 

To all this the answer seemed plain enough 
after a little thought. She did not know how 
fearfully she had disclosed herself ; she was too 
profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more 
ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in 
Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. 
Having nobody to tell her story to, — having, as 
she said in her verses, no musical instrument to 
laugh and cry with her, — nothing, in short, but 
the language of pen and pencil, — all the veinings 
of her nature were impressed on these pages, as 
those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank 
sheets which inclose it. It was the same thing 
which I remember seeing beautifully shown in a 
child of some^four or five years we had one day 
at our boarding-house. This child was a deaf 
mute. But its soul had the inner sense that an- 
swers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which 
through natural organs realizes itself in words. 
Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such 
speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling 
and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over 
its face, I have never seen in any other human 
countenance. 

I wonder if something of spiritual transparency 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 289 

is not typified in the golden-blonde organization. 
There are a great many little creatures, — many 
small fishes, for instance, — which are literally trans- 
parent, with the exception of some of the internal 
organs. The heart can be seen beating as if 
in a case of clouded crystal. The central nervous 
column with its sheath runs as a dark stripe 
through the whole length of the diaphanous mus- 
cles of the body. Other little creatures are so 
darkened with pigment that we can see only their 
surface. Conspirators and poisoners are painted 
with black, beady eyes and swarthy hue; Judas, 
in Leonardo's picture, is the model of them all. 

However this may be, I should say there never 
had been a book like this of Iris, — so full of the 
heart's silent language, so transparent that the 
heart itself could be seen beating through it. I 
should say there never could have been such a 
book, but for one recollection, which is not pecu- 
liar to myself, but is shared by a certain number 
of my former townsmen. If you think I overcolor 
this matter of the young girl's book, hear this, 
which there are others, as I just said, besides my- 
self, will tell you is strictly true. 

The Book of the Three Maiden 'Sisters. 
In the town called Cantabridge, now a city, 
water-veined and gas windpiped, in the street run- 
ning down to the Bridge, beyond which dwelt 



290 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Sally, told of in a book of a friend of mine, was 
of old a house inhabited by three maidens. They 
left no near kinsfolk, I believe; if they did, I 
have no ill to speak of them; for they lived and 
died in all good report and maidenly credit. The 
house they lived in was of the small, gambrel- 
roofed cottage pattern, after the shape of Esquires' 
houses, but after the size of the dwellings of 
handicraftsmen. The lower story was fitted up as 
a shop. Specially was it provided with one of 
those half-doors now so rarely met with, which 
are to whole doors as spencers worn by old folk 
are to coats. They speak of limited commerce 
united with a social or observing disposition on 
the part of the shopkeeper, — allowing, as they do, 
talk with passers-by, yet keeping off such as have 
not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. 
On the door-posts, at either side, above the half- 
door, hung certain perennial articles of merchan- 
dise, of which my memory still has hanging 
among its faded photographs a kind of netted 
scarf and some pairs of thick woollen stockings. 
More articles, but not very many, were stored in- 
side ; and there was one drawer, containing chil- 
dren's books, out of which I once was treated to 
a minute quarto ornamented with handsome cuts. 
This was the only purchase I ever knew to be 
made at the shop kept by the three maiden ladies, 
though it is probable there were others. So long 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 291 

as I remember the shop, the same scarf and, 1 
should say, the same stockings hung on the door- 
posts. — [You think I am exaggerating again, and 
that shopkeepers would not keep the same article 
exposed for years. Come to me, the Professor, 
and I will take you in five minutes to a shop in 
this city where I will show you an article hang- 
ing now in the very place where more than thirty 
years ago I myself inquired the price of it of the 
present head of the establishment] 

The three maidens were of comely presence, 
and one of them had had claims to be considered 
a Beauty. When I saw them in the old meet- 
ing-house on Sundays, as they rustled in through 
the aisles in silks and satins, not gay, but more 
than decent, as I remember them, I thought of 
My Lady Bountiful in the history of " Little 
King Pippin," and of the Madam Blaize of Gold- 
smith (who, by the way, must have taken the hint 
of it from a pleasant poem, " Monsieur de la 
Palisse," attributed to De la Monnoye, in the col- 
lection of French songs before me).* There was 
some story of an old romance in which the 
Beauty had played her part. Perhaps they all 
had had lovers ; for, as I said, they were shapely 
and seemly personages, as I remember them ; but 
their lives were out of the flower and in the berry 
at the time of my first recollections. 

* Vide Bartlett's " Familiar Quotations." 



292 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

One after another they all three dropped away, 
objects of kindly attention to the good people 
round, leaving little or almost nothing, and no- 
body to inherit it. Not absolutely nothing, of 
course. There must have been a few old dresses, 
— perhaps some bits of furniture, a Bible, and the 
spectacles the good old souls read it through, and 
little keepsakes, such as make us cry to look at, 
when we find them in old drawers ; — such relics 
there must have been. But there was more. 
There was a manuscript of some hundred pages, 
closely written, in which the poor things • had 
chronicled for many years the incidents of their 
daily life. After their death it was passed round 
somewhat freely, and fell into my hands. How I 
have cried and laughed and colored over it! 
There was nothing in it to be ashamed of, per- 
haps there was nothing in it to laugh at, but 
such a picture of the mode of being of poor 
simple good old women I do believe was never 
^drawn before. And there were all the smallest 
incidents recorded, such as do really make up 
humble life, but which die out of all mere literary 
memoirs, as the houses where the Egyptians or 
the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their 
temples standing. I know, for instance, that on a 
given day of a certain year, a kindly woman, her- 
self a poor widow, now, I trust, not without 
special mercies in heaven for her good deeds, — 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 293 

for I read her name on a proper tablet in the 
churchyard a week ago, — sent a fractional pud- 
ding from her own table to the Maiden Sisters, 
who, I fear, from the warmth and detail of their 
description, were fasting, or at least on short 
allowance, about that time. I know who sent 
them the segment of melon, which in her riotous 
fancy one of them compared to those huge barges, 
to which we give the ungracious name of mud- 
scows. But why should I illustrate further what 
it seems almost a breach of confidence to speak 
of? Some kind friend, who could challenge a 
nearer interest than the curious strangers into 
whose hands the book might fall, at last claimed 
it, and I was glad that it should be henceforth 
sealed to common eyes. I learned from it that 
every good and, alas ! every evil act we do may 
slumber unforgotten even in some earthly record. 
I got a new lesson in that humanity which our 
sharp race finds it so hard to learn. The poor 
widow, fighting hard to feed and clothe and edu- 
cate her children, had not forgotten the poorer 
ancient maidens. I remembered it the other day, 
as I stood by her place of rest, and I felt sure 
that it was remembered elsewhere. I know there 
are prettier words than pudding, but I can't help 
it, — the pudding went upon the record, I feel 
sure, with the mite which was cast into the trea- 
sury by that other poor widow whose deed the 



294 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

world shall remember forever, and with the coats 
and garments which the good women cried over, 
w^hen Tabitha, called by interpretation Dorcas, lay 
dead in the upper chamber, with her charitable 
needlework strewed around her. 



. Such was the Book of the Maiden Sisters. 

You will believe me more readily now when I 
tell you that I found the soul of Iris in the one 
that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a 
poem that held it, sometimes a drawing, — angel, 
arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic sym- 
bol of which I could make nothing. A rag of 
cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak 
of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as 
naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. 
On the next page a dead bird, — some little 
favorite, I suppose ; for it was worked out with a 
special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with 
which once or twice in my life I have had a let- 
ter sealed, — a round spot where the paper is 
slightly corrugated, and, if there is writing there, 
the letters are somewhat faint and blurred. Most 
of the pages were surrounded with emblematic 
traceries. It was strange to me at first to see 
how often she introduced those homelier wild- 
flowers which we call weeds, — for it seemed there 
was none of them too humble for her to love, and 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 295 

none too little cared for by Nature to be without 
its beauty for her artist eye and pencil. By the 
side of the garden-flowers, — of Spring's curled 
darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketch- 
ing maidens, of flower-de-luces and morning-glories, 
— nay, oftener than these, and more tenderly ca- 
ressed by the colored brush that rendered them, — 
were those common growths which fling them- 
selves to be crushed under our feet and our 
wheels, making themselves so cheap in this per- 
petual martyrdom that we forget each of them is 
a ray of the Divine beauty. 

Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dan- 
delions, — just as we see them lying in the grass, 
like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun 
of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which 
whitens the fields, to the great disgust of liberal 
shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes, with its 
button-like mound of gold set round with milk- 
white rays ; the tall-stemmed succory, setting its 
pale ^lue flowers aflame, one after another, spar- 
ingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra 
of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned 
monarchs are dying out ; the red and white clo- 
vers ; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain, — " the 
white man's foot," as the Indians called it, — the 
wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant 
which we call " knot-g-rasSi" and which loves its 
life so dearly that it is next to impossible to mur- 



296 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

der it with a hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the 
pavement; — all these plants, and many more, she 
wove into her fanciful garlands and borders. — On 
one of the pages were some musical notes. I 
touched them from curiosity on a piano belonging 
to one of our boarders. Strange! There are pas- 
sages that I have heard before, plaintive, full of 
some hidden meaning, as if they were gasping for 
words to interpret them. She must have heard 
the strains that have so excited my curiosity, com- 
ing from my neighbor's chamber. The illuminated 
border she had traced round the page that held 
these notes took the place of the words they 
seemed to be aching for. Above, a long monot- 
onous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and 
jaded and sullen, if you can imagine such an ex- 
pression in water. On one side an Alpine needle^ 
as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. 
On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morn- 
ing-tint that shone in the drops had a strange 
look, — one would say the cliff was bleeding; — 
perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of 
sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings 
spread over some unseen object. — And on the very 
next page a procession wound along, after the 
fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller's " Holy 
War," in which I recognized without difficulty 
every boarder at our table in all the glory of 
the most resplendent caricature, — three only ex- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 297 

cepted,— the Little Gentleman, myself, and one 

other. 

I confess I did expect to see something that 
would remind me of the girl's little deformed 
neighbor, if not portraits of him.— There is a 
left arm again, though ; — no, — that is from the 
« Fighting Gladiator," — the " Jeune Heros combat- 
tanf' of the Louvre ; — there is the broad ring of 
the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate 
casts of the " Gladiator's " arm look immense ; but 
in its place the limb looks light, almost slender,— 
such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. 
I never felt as if I touched the life of the old 
Greeks until I looked on that statue.] — Here is 
something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all 
the humped and crooked creatures! What could 
have been in her head when she worked out 
such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them 
all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A 
Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A dromedary 
flashing up the sands, — spray of the dry ocean 
' sailed by the " ship of the desert." A herd of 
buffaloes, uncouth, shaggy-maned, heavy in the 
forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The buffalo 
is the lion of the ruminants.] And there is a 
Norman horse, with his huge, rough collar, echo- 
ing, as it were, the natural form of the other 
beast. And here are twisted serpents ; and stately 
Bwans, with answering curves in their bowed 

13* 



298 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

necks, as if they had snake's blood under their 
white feathers ; and grave, high-shouldered herons, 
standing on one foot like cripples, and looking at 
life round them with the cold stare of monu- 
mental effigies. — A very odd page indeed ! Not 
a creature in it without a curve or a twist, and 
not one of them a mean figure to look at. You 
can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you 
know. I believe she is trying to idealize what we 
vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to look 
at in the light of one of Nature's eccentric curves, 
belonging to her system of beauty, as the hyper- 
bola and parabola belong to the conic sections, 
though we cannot see them as symmetrical and 
entire figures, like the circle and ellipse. At any 
rate, I cannot help referring this paradise of 
twisted spines to some idea floating in her head 
connected with her friend whom Nature has 
warped in the moulding. — That is nothing to 
another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe 
her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body 
at times, — if it does not really get freed or half 
freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of 
catalepsy? You know what I mean, — transient 
loss of sense, will, and motion ; body and limbs 
taking any position in which they are put, as if 
they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talk- 
ing with him and listening to him one day wheij 
he boarders moved from the table nearly all at 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 299 

once. But she sat as before, her cheek resting on 
her hand, her amber eyes wide open and still. I 
went to her, — she was breathing as usual, and 
her heart was beating naturally enough, — but she 
did not answer. I bent her arm; it was as plastic 
as softened wax, and kept the place I gave it. — 
This will never do, though, — and I sprinkled a 
few drops of water on her forehead. She started 
and looked round. — I have been in a dream , — 
she said ; — I feel as if all my strength were in 
this arm; — give me your hand! — She took my 
right hand in her left, which looked soft and white 
enough, but — Good Heaven ! I believe she will 
crack my bones I All the nervous power in her 
body must have flashed through those muscles ; 
as when a crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars, 
— she who could hardly glove herself when in her 
common health. Iris turned pale, and the tears, 
came to her eyes ; — she saw she had given pain. 
Then she trembled, and might have fallen but for 
me ; — the poor little soul had been in one of 
those trances that belong to the spiritual pathol- 
ogy of higher natures, mostly those of women. 

To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. 
Two pages faced each other which I took for 
symbolical expressions of two states of mind. 
On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over 
the page, specked with a single bird. No trace 
of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to 



SOO THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one 
of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone 
of all men has pictured. I am sure she must 
have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which 
the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, de- 
scribed by another as " cemeteries of departed 
greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things 
are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions 
among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and 
mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon 
faced the page that held the blue sky and the 
single bird; at the bottom of it something was 
coiled, — what, and whether meant for dead or 
alive, my eyes could not make out. 

1 told you the young girl's soul was in this 
book. As I turned over the last leaves I could 
not help starting. There were all sorts of faces 
among the arabesques which laughed and scowled 
in the borders that ran round the pages. They 
had mostly, the outline of childish or womanly or 
manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. 
But at last it seemed to me that some of them 
were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to 
me; there were features that did not seem new. — 
Can it be so ? Was there ever such innocence 
in a creature so full of life ? She tells her heart's 
secrets as a three-years-o]d child betrays itself 
without need of being questioned ! This was no 
common miss, such as are turned out in scores 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 801 

from the young-lady-factories, with parchments 
warranting them accomplished and virtuous, — in 
case anybody should question the fact. I began 
to understand her ; — and what is so charm- 
ing as to read the secret of a real femme incom- 
prise? — for such there are, though they are not 
the ones who think themselves uncomprehended 
women. 

Poets are never young, in one sense. Their 
delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, 
which coarser souls must travel towards for scores 
of years before their dull sense is touched by 
them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a 
life's experience. I have frequently seen children, 
long exercised by pain and exhaustion, whose 
features had a strange look of advanced age. 
Too often one meets such in our charitable insti- 
tutions. Their faces are saddened and wrinkled, 
as if their few summers were threescore years 
and ten. 

And so, many youthful poets have written as 
if their hearts were old before their time ; their 
pensive morning twilight has been as cool and 
saddening as that of evening in more common 
lives. The profound melancholy of those lines of 
SheUey, 

"I could lie down like a tired child 
And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne and yet must bear/* 



302 THE PROFESSOR AT THE ^REAKF AST-TABLE. 

came from a heart, as he says, " too soon grown 
old," — at twenty-six years^ as dull people count 
time, even when they talk of poets. 

I know enough to be prepared for an excep- 
tional nature, — only this gift of the hand in ren- 
dering every thought in form and color, as well 
as in words, gives a richness to this young girl's 
alphabet of feeling and imagery that takes me by 
surprise. And then besides, and most of all, I 
am puzzled at her sudden and seemingly easy 

confidence in me. Perhaps I owe it to my 

Well, no matter! How one must love the editor 
who first calls him the venerable So- and- So ! 

1 locked the book and sighed as I laid it 

down. The world is always ready to receive 
talent with open arms. Very often it does not 
know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile 
creature. It bows its head meekly while the world 
slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts 
like a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is 
patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is 
always impatient of its harness ; its wild blood 
makes it hard to train. 

Talent seems, at first, in one sense, higher than 
genius, — namely, that it is more uniformly and 
absolutely submitted to the will, and therefore 
more distinctly human in its character. Genius, 
on the other hand, is much more like those in- 
stincts which govern the admirable movements of 



THE PEOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303 

the lower creatures, and therefore seems to have 
something of the lower or animal character. A 
goose flies by a chart which the Royal Geographi- 
cal Society could not mend. A poet, like the 
goose, sails without visible landmarks to unex- 
plored regions of truth, which philosophy has yet 
to lay down on its atlas. The philosopher gets 
his track by observation ; the poet trusts to his 
inner sense, and makes the straighter and swifter 
line. 

And yet, to look at it in another light, is not 
even the lowest instinct more truly divine than 
any voluntary human act done by the suggestion 
of reason? What is a bee's architecture but an 
wwobstructed divine thought? — what is a builder's 
approximative rule but an obstructed thought of 
the Creator, a mutilated and imperfect copy of 
some absolute rule Divine Wisdom has estab- 
lished, transmitted through a human soul as an 
image through clouded glass ? 

Talent is a very common family-trait; genius 
belongs rather to individuals; — just as you find 
one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a 
whole brood of either. Talent is often to be 
envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. 
It stands twice the chance of the other of dying 
in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is 
a perpetual insult to mediocrity ; its every word 
is a trespass against somebody's vested ideas, — 



804 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

blasphemy against somebody's 0'/?2, or intangible 
private truth. 

What is the use of my weighing out antith- 
eses in this way, like a rhetorical grocer ? — You 
know twenty men of talent, who are making their 
way in the world; you may, perhaps, know one 
man of genius, and very likely do not want to 
know any more. For a divine instinct, such as 
drives the goose southward and the poet heaven- 
ward, is a hard thing to manage, and proves too 
strong for many whom it possesses. It must have 
been a terrible thing to have a friend like Chat- 
terton or Burns. And here is a being who cer- 
tainly has more than talent, at once poet and 
artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed, — a 
woman, too ; — and genius grafted on womanhood 
is like to overgrow it and break its stem, as you 
may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the 
stock which cannot keep pace with its evolution. 

I think now you know something of this young 
person. She wants nothing but an atmosphere to 
expand in. Now and then one meets with a 
nature for which our hard, practical New England 
life is obviously utterly incompetent. It comes 
up, as a Southern seed, dropped by accident in 
one of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and 
blow into flower among the homely roots and the 
hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no ques- 
tion that certain persons who are born among 



us find themselves many degrees too far north. 
Tropical by organization, they cannot fight ii)r life 
with our eastern and northwestern breezes without 
losing the color and fragrance into which their 
lives would have blossomed in the latitude of 
myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced 
by suffering any living thing to be developed 
under conditions such as Nature bad not intended 
for it. A French physiologist confined some tad- 
poles under water in the dark. Removed from the 
natural stimulus of light, they did not develop legs 
and arms at the proper period of their growth, 
and so become frogs ; they swelled and spread 
into gigantic tadpoles. I have seen a hundred 
colossal human tadpoles, — overgrown larvce or em- 
bryos; nay, I am afraid we Protestants should 
look on a considerable proportion of the Holy 
Father's one hundred and thirty-nine millions as 
spiritual larvce^ sculling about in the dark by the 
aid of their caudal extremities, instead of stand- 
ing on their legs, and breathing by gills, instead 
of taking the free air of heaven into the lungs 
made to receive it. Of course we never try to 
keep young souls in the tadpole state, for fear 
they should get a pair or two of legs by-and-by 
and jump out of the pool where they have been 
bred and fed I Never ! Never. Never ? 

Now to go back to our plant. You may know, 
that, for the earlier stages of development of almost 



306 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

any vegetable, you only want air, water, light, and 
warmth. But by-and-by, if it is to have special 
complex principles as a part of its organization, 
they must be supplied by the soil ; — your pears 
will crack, if the root of the tree gets no iron, — 
your asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you 
do. Just at the period of adolescence, the mind 
often suddenly begins to come into flower and to 
set its fruit. Then it is that many young natures, 
having exhausted the spiritual soil round them of 
all it contains of the elements they demand, wither 
V away, undeveloped and uncolored, unless they are 
Ti*ajisplg.ated. 

Pray for the'^^ dear^^y^ung souls I This is the 
second natural birth; — for I do not speak of 
those peculiar religious experiences which form the 
point of transition in many lives between the con- 
sciousness of a general relation to the Divine na- 
ture and a special personal relation. The litany 
should count a prayer for them in the list of its 
supplications ; masses should be said for them as 
for souls in purgatory ; all good Christians should 
remember them as they remember those in peril 
through travel or sickness or in warfare. 

I would transport this child to Rome at^once, 
if I had my will. She should ripen under an 
Italian sun. She should walk under the frescoed 
vaults of palaces, until her colors deepened to 
those of Venetian beauties, and her forms were 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 307 

perfected into rivalry with the Greek marbles, and 
the east wind was out of her soul. Has she not 
exhausted this lean soil of the elements her grow- 
ing nature requires ? 

I do not know. The magnolia grows and 
comes into full flower on Cape Ann, many de- 
grees out of its proper region. I was riding once 
along that delicious road between the hills and 
the sea, when we passed a thicket where there 
seemed to be a chance of finding it. In five 
minutes I had fallen on the trees in full blossom, 
and filled my arms with the sweet, resplendent 
flowers. I could not believe I was in our cold, 
northern Essex, which, in the dreary season when 
I pass its slate-colored, unpainted farm-houses, and 
huge, square, windy, 'squire-built " mansions," looks 
as brown and unvegetating as an old rug with its 
patterns all trodden out and the colored fringe 
worn from all its border. 

If the magnolia can bloom in northern New 
England, why should not a poet or a painter 
come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, 
but if the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only 
as if by a freak of Nature springs up in a single 
spot among the beeches and alders, is- there not 
as much reason to think the perfumed flower of 
imaginative genius will find it hard to be born 
and harder to spread its leaves in the clear, cold 
atmosphere of our ultra-temperate zone of human- 
ity ? 



308 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe 
that a person with the poetical faculty finds ma- 
terial everywhere. The grandest objects of sense 
and thought are common to all climates and civili- 
zations. The sky, the woods, the waters, the 
storms, life, death, love, the hope and vision of 
eternity, — these are images that write themselves 
in poetry in every soul which has anything of the 
divine gift. 

On the other hand, there is such a thing as a 
lean, impoverished life, in distinction from a rich 
and suggestive one. Which our common New 
England life might be considered, I will not de- 
cide. But there are some things I think the poet 
misses in our western Eden. I trust it is not un- 
patriotic to mention them in this point of view, 
as they come before us in so many other aspects. 

There is no sufficient flavor of humanity in the 
soil out of which w^e grow. At Cantabridge, near 
the sea, I have once or twice picked up an Indian 
arrowhead in a fresh furrow. At Canoe Meadow, 
in the Berkshire Mountains, I have found Indian 
arrowheads. So everywhere Indian arrowheads. 
Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who 
knows? who cares? There is no history to the 
red race, — there is hardly an individual in it; — 
a few instincts on legs and holding a tomahawk, 
— there is the Indian of all time. The story of 
one red ant is the story of all red ants. So, the 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 309 

poet, in trying to wing his way back through the 
life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our 
watercourses and on our southern hillsides for un- 
known generations, finds nothing to breathe or fly 
in ; he meets 

" A vast vacuity ! all unawares, 
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down lie drops 
Ten thousand fathom deep." 

But think of the Old World, — that part of it 
which is the seat of ancient civilization! The 
stakes of the Britons' stockades are still standing 
in the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns 
up an old Saxon's bones, and beneath them is a 
tessellated pavement of the time of the Caesars. 
In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be 
of yesterday, — Rome, under her kings, is but an 
intruding new-comer, as we contemplate her in 
the shadow of the Cyclopean walls of Fiesole or 
Volterra. It makes a man human to, live on 
these old humanized soils. He cannot help march- 
ing in step with his kind in the rear of such a 
procession. They say a dead man's hand cures 
swellings, if laid on them. There is nothing like 
the dead cold hand of the Past to take down our 
tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow 
of the life of our race. Rousseau came out of 
one of his sad self-torturing fits, as he cast his 
eye on the arches of the old Roman aqueduct, the 
Pont du Gard. 



310 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I am far from denying that there is an attrac- 
tion in a thriving railroad village. The new 
" depot," the smartly- painted pine houses, the 
spacious brick hotel, the white meeting-house, and 
the row of youthful and leggy trees before it, are 
exhilarating. They speak of progress, and the 
time when there shall be a city, with a His 
Honor the Mayor, in the place of their trim but 
transient architectural growths. Pardon me, if I 
prefer the pyramids. They seem to me crystals 
formed from a stronger solution of humanity than 
the steeple of the new meeting-house. I may be 
wrong, but the Tiber has a voice for ■ me, as 
it whispers to the piers of the Pons JElius, 
even more full of meaning than my well-beloved 
Charles eddying round the piles of West Boston 
Bridge. 

Then, again, we Yankees are a kind of gypsies, 
— a mechanical and migratory race. A poet 
wants a home. He can dispense with an apple- 
parer and a reaping-machine. I feel this more for 
others than for myself, for the home of my birth 
and childhood has been as yet exempted from 
the change which has invaded almost everything 
around it. 

Pardon me a short digression. To what 

small things our memory and our affections attach 
themselves! I remember, when I was a child, 
that one of the girls planted some Star-of-Bethle- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 311 

hem bulbs in the southwest corner of our front- 
yard. Well, I left the paternal roof and wandered 
in other lands, and learned to think in the words 
of strange people. But after many years, as 1 
looked on the little front-yard again, it occurred 
to me that there used to be some Stars-of-Bethle- 
hem in the southwest corner. The grass was tall 
there, and the blade of the plant is very much 
like grass, only thicker and glossier. Even as 
Tully parted the briers and brambles when he 
hunted for the sphere-containing cylinder that 
marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I comb 
the grass with my fingers for my monumental 
memorial-flower. Nature had stored my keepsake 
tenderly in her bosom; the glossy, faintly streaked 
blades were there ; they are there still, though they 
never flower, darkened as they are by the shade 
of the elms and rooted in the matted turf. 

Our hearts are held down to our homes by 
innumerable fibres, trivial as that I have just re- 
called; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you 
remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. 
Even a stone with a whitish band crossing it, be- 
longing to the pavement of the back-yard, insisted 
on becoming one of the talismans of memory. 
This intussusception of the ideas of inanimate ob- 
jects, and their faithful storing away among the 
sentiments, are curiously prefigured in the material 
structure of the thinking centre itself. In the very 



312 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

core of the brain, in the part where Des Cartes 
placed the soul, is a small mineral deposit, con- 
sisting, as I have seen it in the microscope, of 
grape-like masses of crystalline matter. 

But the plants that come up every year in the 
same place, like the Stars-of-Bethlehem, of all the 
lesser objects, give me the liveliest home-feeling. 
Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the 
dwelling of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus. I re- 
member the sweet honeysuckle that I saw in 
flower against the wall of his house a few months 
ago, as long as I remember the sky and stars. 
That clump of peonies, batting their purple heads 
through the soil every spring in just the same 
circle, and by-and-by unpacking their hard balls 
of buds in flowers big enough to make a double 
handful of leaves, has come up in just that place, 
Neighbor Walrus tells rne, for more years than I 
have passed on this planet. It is a rare privilege 
in our nomadic state to find the home of one's 
childhood and its immediate neighborhood thus 
unchanged. Many born poets, I am afraid, flower 
poorly in song, or not at all, because they have 
been too often transplanted. 

Then a good many of our race are very hard 
and unimaginative; — their voices have nothing 
caressing; their movements are as of machinery 
■without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to 
print a letter a young girl, about the age of our 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 313 

Iris, wrote a short time since. " I am *** *** ***," 
she says, and tells her whole name outright. Ah! 

— said I, when I read that first frank declara- 
tion, — you are one of the right sort I — She was. 
A winged creature among close-clipped barn-door 
fowl. How tired the poor girl was of the dull 
life about her. — the old woman's "skeleton hand" 
at the window opposite, drawing her curtains, — 
" Ma'am shooing away the hens," — the vac- 
uous country eyes staring at her as only country 
eyes can stare, — a routine of mechanical duties, 

— and the soul's half-articulated cry for sympathy, 
without an answer I Yes, — pray for her, and for 
all such ! Faith often cures their lono:ino:s : but it 
is so hard to give a soul to heaven that has not 
first been trained in the fullest and sweetest hu- 
man affections! Too often they fling their hearts 
away on unworthy objects. Too often they pine 
in a secret discontent, which spreads its leaden 
cloud over the morning of their youth. The im- 
measurable distance between one of these delicate 
natures and the average youths among whom is 
like to be her only choice makes one's heart ache. 
How many women are born too finely organized 
in sense and soul for the highway they must walk 
with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the wants 
of the stronger sex. There are plenty of torrents 
to be crossed in its journey ; but their stepping- 
stones are measured by the stride of man, and 
not of woman, 

14 



814 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Women are more subject than men to atrophy 
of the heart. So says the great medical authority, 
Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used to 
find their hospitals in convents. We have the 
disease in New England, — but not the hospitals. 
I don't like to think of it. I will not believe our 
young Iris is going to die out in this way. Provi- 
dence will find her some great happiness, or afflic- 
tion, or duty, — and which would be best for her, 
I cannot tell. One thing is sure : the interest she 
takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more 
engrossing than ever. Something is the matter 
with him, and she knows it, and I think worries 
herself about it. 

I wonder sometimes how so firagile and dis- 
torted a frame has kept the fiery spirit that in- 
habits it so long its tenant. He accounts for it 
in his own way. 

The air of the Old World is good for nothing, 

— he said, one day. — Used up. Sir, — breathed 
over and over again. You must come to this side, 
Sir, for an atmosphere fit to breathe nowadays. 
Did not worthy Mr. Higginson say that a breath 
of New England's air is better than a sup of Old 
England's ale? I ought to have died when I was 
a boy. Sir ; but I couldn't die in this Boston air, 

— and I think I shall have to go to New York 
one of these days, when it's time for me to drop 
this bundle, — or to New Orleans, where they 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 315 

have the yellow fever, — or to Philadelphia, where 
they have so many doctors. 

This was some time ago ; but of late he has 
seemed, as I have before said, to be ailing. An 
experienced eye, such as I think I may call mine, 
can tell commonly whether a man is going to die, 
or not, long before he^ or his friends are alarmed 
about him. I don't like it. 

Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second- 
sight runs in her family, and that she is afraid 
she has it. Those who are so endowed look upon 
a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. 
According to the degree to which it covers him, 
his death will be near or more remote. It is an 
awful faculty ; but science gives one too much 
like it. Luckily for our friends, most of us who 
have the scientific second-sight school ourselves 
not to betray our knowledge by word or look. 

Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to 
the table, it seems to me that the shadow of some 
approaching change falls darker and darker over his 
countenance. Nature is struggling with something, 
and I am afraid she is under in the wrestling- 
match. You do not care much, perhaps, for my 
particular conjectures as to the nature of his diffi- 
culty. I should say, however, from the sudden 
flushes to which he is subject, and certain other 
marks which, as an expert, I know how to inter- 
pret, that his heart was in trouble ; but then he 



316 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

presses his hand to the ri^ht side, as if there were 
the centre of his uneasiness. 

When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not 
mean any of those sentimental maladies of that 
organ which figure more largely in romances than 
on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. 
I mean some actual change in the organ itself, 
which may carry him off by slow and painful de- 
grees, or strike him down with one huge pang 
and only time for a single shriek, — as when the 
shot broke through the brave Captain Nolan's 
breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Bala- 
klava, and with a loud cry he dropped dead from 
his saddle. 

I thought it only fair to say something of what 
I apprehended to some who were entitled to be 
warned. The landlady's face fell when I men- 
tioned my fears. 

Poor man! — she said. — And will leave the best 
room empty! Hasn't he got any sisters or nieces 
or anybody to see to his things, if he should be 
took away? Such a sight of cases, full of every- 
thing! Never thought of his failin' so suddin. A 
complication of diseases, she expected. Liver-com- 
plaint one of 'em ? 

After this first involuntary expression of the too 
natural selfish feelings, (which we must not judge 
very harshly, unless we happen to be poor widows 
ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 317 

taught, — rents high, — beef eighteen to twenty 
cents per pound,) — after this first squeak of sel- 
fishness, followed by a brief movement of curi- 
osity, so invariable in mature females, as to the 
nature of the complaint which threatens the life 
of a friend or any person who may happen to be 
mentioned as ill, — the worthy soul's better feel- 
ings struggled up to the surface, and she grieved 
for the doomed invalid, until a tear or two came 
forth and found their way down a channel worn 
for them since the early days of her widowhood. 

Oh, this dreariful, dreadful business of being the 
prophet of evil ! Of all the trials which those who 
take charge of others' health and lives have to 
undergo, this is the most painful. It is all so 
plain to the practised eye ! — and there is the 
poor wife, the doting mother, who has never sus- 
pected anything, or at least has clung always to 
the hope which you are just going to wrench 
away from her ! — I must tell Iris that I think 
her poor friend is in a precarious state. She 
seems nearef to him than anybody. 

I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, 
she kept a still face, except, perhaps, a little 
trembling of the lip. — Could I be certain that 
there was any mortal complaint ? — Why, no, I 
could not be certain; but it looked alarming to 
me. — He shall have some of my life, — she said. 

I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of 



318 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a kind of magnetic power she could give out; — 
at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her 
strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor 
and color from that day. I have sometimes 
thought he gained the force she lost; but this 
may have been a whim, very probably." 

One day she came suddenly to me, looking 
deadly pale. Her lips moved, as if she w^e 
speaking ; but I could not at first hear a word. 
Her hair looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and 
her eyes were full of wild light. She sunk upon 
a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her 
trances. Something had frozen her blood with 
fear ; I thought, from what she said, half audibly, 
that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure. 

That night, at about eleven o'clock, I was sent 
for to see the Little Gentleman, who was taken 
suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went before me 
with a light. The doors were both unfastened, 
and I found myself ushered, without hindrance, 
into the dim light of the mysterious apartment I 
had so longed to enter. 

I found these stanzas in the young girl's book, 
among many others. I give them as characteriz- 
ing the tone of her sadder moments. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 319 



UNDER THE VIOLETS. 

Her hands are cold ; her face is white ; 
No more her pulses come and go ; 

Her eyes are shut to life and light; — 
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, 
And lay her where the violets blow. 

But not beneath a graven stone, 
To plead for tears with alien eyes; 

A slender cross of wood alone 

Shall say, that here a maiden lies 
In peace beneath the peaceful skies. 

And gray old trees of hugest limb 

Shall wheel their circling shadows round 

To make the scorching sunlight dim 

That drinks the greenness from the ground, 
And drop their dead leaves on her mound. 

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, 
And through their leaves the robins call. 

And, ripening in the autumn sun. 
The acorns and the chestnuts fall, 
Doubt not that she will heed them all. 

For her the morning choir shall sing 
Its matins from the branches high, 

And every minstrel-voice of spring, 
That trills beneath the April sky, 
Shall greet her with its earliest cry. 



320 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

When, turning round their dial-track, 
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, 

Her litde mourners, clad in black, 

The crickets, sliding through the grass, 
Shall pipe for her an evening mass. 

At last the rootlets of the trees 

Shall find the prison where she lies, 

And bear the buried dust they seize 
In leaves and blossoms to the skies. 
So may the soul that warmed it rise ! 

If any, born of kindlier blood. 

Should ask, What maiden lies below ? 

Say only this: A tender bud, 

That tried to blossom in the snow, 
Lies withered where the violets blow. 



XL 



You will know, perhaps, in the course of half 
an hour's reading, what has been haunting my 
hours of sleep and waking for months. I cannot 
tell, of course, whether you are a nervous person 
or not. If, however, you are such a person, — if 
it is late at night, — if all the rest of the house- 
hold have gone off to bed, — if the wind is shak- 
ing your windows as if a human hand were rat- 
tling the sashes, — if your candle or lamp is low 
and will soon burn out, — let me advise you to 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 321 

take up some good quiet sleepy volume, or at- 
tack the " Critical Notices " of the last Quarterly, 
and leave this to be read by daylight, with cheer- 
ful voices round, and people near by who would 
hear you, if you slid from your chair and came 
down in a lump on the floor. 

I do not say that your heart will beat as mine 
did, I am willing to confess, when I entered the 
dim chamber. Did I not tell you that I was 
sensitive and imaginative, and that I had lain 
awake with thinking what were the strange move- 
ments and sounds which I heard late at night in 
my little neighbor's apartment ? It had come to 
that pass that I was truly unable to separate 
what I had really heard from what I had dreamed 
in those nightmares to which I have been subject, 
as before mentioned. So, when I walked into the 
room, and Bridget, turning back, closed the door 
and left me alone with its tenant, I do believe 
you could have grated a nutmeg on my skin, 
such a " goose-flesh " shiver ran over it. It was 
not fear, but what I call nervousness, — unreason- 
ing, but irresistible; as when, for instance, one 
looking at the sun going down says, " I will 
count fifty before it disappears " ; and as he goes 
on and it becomes doubtful whether he will reach 
the number, he gets strangely flurried, and his 
imagination pictures life and death and heaven 
and hell as the issues depending on the comple- 

14* 



322 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tion or non-completion of the fifty he is counting. 
Extreme curiosity will excite some people as 
much as fear, or what resembles fear, acts on 
some other less impressible natures. 

1 may find myself in the midst of strange facts 
in this little conjurer's room. Or, again, there 
may be nothing in this poor invalid's chamber but 
some old furniture, such as they say came over in 
the Mayflower. All this is just what I mean to 
find out while I am looking at the Little Gentle- 
man, who has suddenly become my patient. The 
simplest things turn out to be unfathomable mys- 
teries ; the most mysterious appearances prove to 
be the most commonplace objects in disguise. 

I wonder whether the boys that live in Roxbury 
and Dorchester are ever moved to tears or filled 
with silent awe as they look upon the rocks and 
fragments of " puddingstone " abounding in those 
localities.- I have my suspicions that those boys 
" heave a stone " or " fire a brickbat," composed 
of the conglomerate just mentioned, without any 
more tearful or philosophical contemplations than 
boys of less favored regions expend on the same 
performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a 
thing to look at, to think about, to study over, to 
dream upon, to go crazy with, to beat one's 
brains out against. Look at that pebble in it. 
From what cliff was it broken ? On what beach 
rolled by the waves of what ocean ? How and 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 323 

when imbedded in soft ooze, which itself became 
stone, and by-and-by was lifted into bald summits 
and steep cliffs, such as you may see on Meeting- 
house-Hill any day — yes, and mark the scratches 
on their faces left when the boulder-carrying gla- 
ciers planed the surface of the continent with such 
rough tools that the storms have not worn the 
marks out of it with all the polishing of ever so 
many thousand years ? 

Or as you pass a roadside ditch or pool in 
spring-time, take from it any bit of stick or straw 
which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some 
little worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing 
specks are fastened to the stick : eggs of a small 
snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks magnified 
prjoves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque 
mass in its centre. And while you are looking, 
the opaque mass begins to stir, and by-and-by 
r slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet, 
— life beginning in the microcosm, as in the great 
worlds of the firmament, with the revolution that 
turns the surface in ceaseless round to the source 
of life and light. 

A pebble and the spawn of a mollusk ! Before 
you have solved their mysteries, this earth where 
you first saw them may be a vitrified slag, or a 
vapor diffused through the planetary spaces. Mys- 
teries are common enough, at any rate, whatever 
the boys in Roxbury and Dorchester think of 



324 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

" brickbats " and the spawn of creatures that live 
in roadside puddles. 

But then a great many seeming mysteries are 
relatively perfectly plain, when we can get at 
them so as to turn them over. How many ghosts 
that " thick men's blood with cold " prove to be 
shirts hung out to dry! How many mermaids 
have been made out of seals I How many times 
have horse-mackerels been taken for the sea-ser- 
pent I 

— — Let me take the whole matter coolly, while 
I see what is the matter with the patient. That 
is what I say to myself, as I draw a chair to the 
bedside. — The bed is an old-fashioned, dark ma- 
hogany four-poster. It was never that which made 
the noise of something moving. It is too heavy 
to be pushed about the room. — The Little Gentle- 
man was sitting, bolstered up by pillows, with his 
hands clasped and their united palms resting, 
on the back of the head, — one of the three or 
four positions specially affected by persons whose 
breathing is difficult from disease of the heart or 
other causes. 

Sit down. Sir, — he said, — sit down I I have 
come to the hill Difficulty, Sir, and am fighting 
my way up. — His speech was laborious and in- 
terrupted. 

Don't talk, — I said, — except to answer my 
questions. — And I proceeded to " prospect " for 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 325 

the marks of some local mischief, which you know 
is at the bottom of all these attacks, though we 
do not always find it. I suppose I go to work 
pretty much like other professional folks of my 
temperament. Thus : — 

Wrist, if you please. — I was on his right side, 
but he presented his left wrist, crossing it over the 
other. — I begin to count, holding watch in left 
hand. One, two, three, four, What a hand- 
some hand! — wonder if that splendid stone is a 
carbuncle. — One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, 

Can't see much, it is so dark, except one 

white object. — One, two, three, four, Hang 

it! eighty or ninety in the minute, I guess. — 
Tongue, if you please. — Tongue is put out. For- 
get to look at it, or, rather, to take any particular 
notice of it ; — but what is that white object, with 
the long arm stretching up as if pointing to the 
sky, just as Vesalius and Spigelius and those old 
fellows used to put their skeletons ? I don't think 
anything of such objects, you know ; but what 
should he have it in his chamber for? — As I had 
found his pulse irregular and intermittent, I took 
out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass for 
looking into people's chests with your ears, and 
laid it over the place where the heart beats. I 
missed the usual beat of the organ. — How is 
this ? — I said, — where is your heart gone to ? — 
He took the stethoscope and shifted it across to 



326 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the right side ; there was a displacement of the 
organ. — I am ill-packed, — he said; — there was 
no room for my heart in its place as it is with 
other men. — God help him ! 

It is hard to draw the line between scientific 
cm'iosity and the desire for the patient's sake to 
learn all the details of his condition. I must look 
at this patient's chest, an^i thump it and listen to 
it. For this is a case of ectopia cordis, my boy, 

— displacement of the heart; and it isn't every 
day you get a chance to overhaul such an inter- 
esting malformation. And so I managed to do 
my duty and satisfy my curiosity at the same 
time. The torso was slight and deformed ; the 
right arm attenuated, — the left full, round, and of 
perfect symmetry. It had run away with the life 
of the other limbs, — a common trick enough of 
Nature's, as I told you before. If you see a man 
with legs withered from childhood, keep out of the 
way of his arms, if you have a quarrel with him. 
He has the strength of four limbs in two ; and if 
he strikes youj it is an arm-blow plus a kick 
administered from the shoulder instead of the 
haunch, where it should have started from. 

Still examining him as a patient, I kept my 
eyes about me to search all parts of the chamber, 
and went on with the double process, as before. 

— Heart hits as hard as a fist, — bellows-sound 
over mitral valves (professional terms you need 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 327 

not attend to). — What the dense is that long 
case for? Got his witch grandmother mummied 
in it? And three big mahogany presses, — hey? 
— A diabolical suspicion came over me which I 
had had once before, — that he miight be one of 
our modern alchemists^ — you understand, — make 
gold, you know, or what looks like it, sometimes 
with the head of a king or queen or of Liberty 
to embelUsh one side of the piece. — Don't I re- 
member hearing him shut a door and lock it 
once? What do you think was kept under that 
lock? Let's have another look at his hand, to see 
if there are any calluses. One can tell a man's 
business, if it is a handicraft, very often by just 
taking a look at his open hand. — Ah I Four cal- 
luses at the end of the fingers of the right hand. 
None on those of the left, i^h, ha! What do 
those mean? 

All this seems longer in the telling, of course, 
than it was in fact. While I was making these 
observations of the objects around me, I was also 
forming my opinion as to the kind of case with 
which I had to deal. 

There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp 
of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press 
the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by 
both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and 
out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out 
of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to 



628 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon 
stagnation, cold, and darkness. The "tripod of 
life" a French physiologist called these three 
organs. It is all clear enough which leg of the 
tripod is going to break down here. I could tell 
you exactly what .the difficulty is ; — which would 
be as intelhgible and amusing as a watchmaker's 
description of a diseased timekeeper to a plough- 
man. It is enough to say, that I four^i just what 
I expected to, and that I think this attack is only 
the prelude of more serious consequences, — which 
expression means you very well know what. 

And now the secrets of this life hanging on a 
thread must surely come out. If I have made a 
mystery where there was none, my suspicions will 
be shamed, as they have often been before. If 
there is anything strange, my visits will clear 
it up. 

I sat an hour or two by the side of the Little 
Gentleman's bed, after giving him some henbane 
to quiet his brain, and some foxglove, which 
an imaginative French professor has called the 
" Opium of the Heart." Under their influence he 
gradually fell into an uneasy, half-waking slumber, 
the body fighting hard for every breath, and the 
mind wandering off" in strange fancies and old rec- 
ollections, which escaped from his lips in broken 
sentences. 

The last of 'em, — he said, — the last of 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 329 

'em all, — thank God! And the grave he lies in 
will look jast as well as if he had been straight. 
Dig it deep, old Martin, dig it deep, — and let 
it be as long* as other folks' graves. And mind 
yoQ get the sods fiat, old man, — flat as ever a 
straight-backed young fellow was laid under. And 
then, with a good tall slab at the head, and a 
footstone six foot away from it, it'll look just as 
if there was a man underneath. 

A man! Who said he was a man? No more 
men of that pattern to bear his name ! — Used to 
be a good-looking set enough. — Where's all the 
manhood and womanhood gone to since his great- 
grandfather was the strongest man that sailed out 
of the town of Boston, and poor Leah there the 
handsomest wom.an in Essex, if she was a witch 1 

• Give me some light, — he said, — more 

light. — I want to see the picture. 

He had started either from a dream or a wan- 
dering reverie. I was not unwilling to have more 
light in the apartment, and presently had lighted 
an astral lamp that stood on a table. — He pointed 
to a portrait hanging against the wall. — Look at 
her, — he said, — look at her! Wasn't that a 
pretty neck fo slip a hangman's noose over? 

The portrait was of a young woman, something 
more than twenty years old, perhaps. There were 
few pictures of any merit painted in New En^ 
land before the time of Smibert, and I am at a 



330 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

loss to know what artist could have taken this 
half-length, which was evidently from life. It was 
somewhat stiff and flat, but the grace of the figure 
and the sweetness of the expression reminded me 
of the angels of the early Florentine painters. 
She must have been of some consideration, for she 
was dressed in paduasoy and lace with hanging 
sleeves, and the old carved frame showed how the 
picture had been prized by its former owners. A 
proud eye she had, with all her sweetness. — I 
think it was that which hanged her, as his strong 
arm hanged Minister George Burroughs ; — but it 
may have been a little mole on one cheek, which 
the artist had just hinted as a beauty rather than 
a deformity. You know, I suppose, that nursling 
imps addict themselves, after the fashion of young 
opossums, to these little excrescences. " Witch- 
marks " were good evidence that a young woman 
was one of the Devil's wet-nurses ; — I should like 
to have seen you make fun of them in those days! 
— Then she had a brooch in her bodice, that 
might have been taken for some devilish amulet 
or other ; and she wore a ring upon one of her 
fingers, with a red stone in it, that flamed as if 
the painter had dipped his pencil in fire; — who 
knows but that it was given her by a midnight 
suitor fresh from that fierce element, and licensed 
for a season to leave his couch of flame to tempt 
the unsanctified hearts of earthly maidens and 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 331 

brand .their cheeks with the print of his scorching 
kisses ? 

She and I, — he said, as he 'looked steadfastly 
at the canvas, — she and I are the last of 'em. — 
She will stay, and I shall go. They never painted 
me, — except when the boys used to make pictures 
o% me with chalk on the board-fences. They 
said the doctors would want my skeleton when I 
was dead. — You are my friend, if you are a 
doctor, — a'n't you ? 

I just gave him my hand. I had not the heart 
fo speak. 

I want to lie still, — he said, — after I am put 
to bed upon the hill yonder. Can't you have a 
great stone laid over me, as they did over the 
first settlers in the old burying-ground at Dorches- 
ter, so as to keep the wolves from digging them 
up? I never slept easy over the sod; — I should 
like to lie quiet under it. And besides, — he said, 
in a kind of scared whisper, — I don't want to 
have my bones stared at, as my body has been. 
I don't doubt I was a remarkable case ; but, for 
God's sake, oh, for God's sake, don't let 'em make 
a show of the cage I have been shut up in and 
looked througk the bars of for so many years! 

I have heard it said that the art of healing 
makes men hardhearted and indifferent to human 
suffering. I am w^illing to own that there is often 
a professional hardness in surgeons, just as there 



332 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

is in theologians, — only much less in degree than 
in these last. It does not commonly improve the 
sympathies of a man to be in the habit of thrust- 
ing knives into his fellow-creatures and burning 
them with red-hot irons, any more than it im- 
proves them to hold the blinding-white cautery of 
Gehenna by its cool handle and score and crftp 
young souls with it until they are scorched into 
the belief of — Transubstantiation or the Immacu- 
late Conception. And, to say the plain truth, I 
think there are a good many coarse people in 
both callings. A delicate nature will not com- 
monly choose a pursuit which implies the habit- 
ual infliction of suffering, so readily as some gentler 
office. Yet, while I am writing this paragraph, 
there passes by my window, on his daily errand 
of duty, not seeing me, though I catch a glimpse 
of his manly features through the oval glass of 
his chaise, as he rides by, a surgeon of skill and 
standing, so friendly, so modest, so tender-hearted 
in all his ways, that, if he had not approved him- 
self at once adroit and firm, one would have said 
he was of too kindly a mould to be the minister 
of pain, even if it were saving pain. 

You may be sure that some merf, even among 
those who have chosen the task of pruning their 
fellow-creatures, grow more and more thoughtful 
and truly compassionate in the midst of their 
cruel experience. They become less nervous, but 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 333 

more sympathetic. They have a truer sensibility 
for others' pain, the more they study pain and 
disease in the light of science. I have said this 
without claiming any special growth in humanity 
for myself, though I do hope I grow tenderer in 
my feelings as I grow older. At any rate, this 
was not a time in which professional habits could 
keep down certain instincts of older date than 
these. 

This poor little man's appeal to my humanity 
against the supposed rapacity of Science, which 
he feared would have her " specimen," if his ghost 
should walk restlessly a thousand years, waiting 
for his bones to be laid in the dust, touched m^r 
heart. But I felt bound to speak cheerily. 

We won't die yet awhile, if we can help 

it, — I said, — and I trust we can help it. But 
don't be afraid ; if I live longest, I will see that 
your resting-place is kept sacred till the dandelions 
and buttercups blow over you. 

He seemed to have got his wits together by 
this time, and to have a vague consciousness that 
he might have been saying more than he meant 
for anybody's ears. — I have been talking a little 
wild, Sir, eh ? — he said. — There is a great buz- 
zing in .my head with those drops of yours, and I 
doubt if my tongue has not been a little looser 
than I would have it. Sir. But I don't much 
want to live, Sir; that's the truth of the matter; 



334 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and it doe-s rather please me to think that fift}^ 
years from now nobody will know that the place 
where I lie doesn't hold as stout and straight a 
man as the best of 'em that stretch out as if they 
were proud of the room they take. You may get 
me well, if you can, Sir, if you think it worth 
while to try ; but I tell you there has been no 
time for this many a year when the smell of fresh 
earth was not sweeter to me than all the flowers 
that grow out of it. There's no anodyne like 
your good clean gravel. Sir. But if you can keep 
me about awhile, and it amuses you to try, you 
may show your skill upon me, if you like. There 
is a pleasure or two that I love the daylight for, 
and I think the night is not far off, at best. — I 
believe I shall sleep now; you may leave me, and 
come, if you like, in the morning. 

Before I passed out, I took one more glance 
round the apartment. The beautiful face of the 
portrait looked at me, as portraits often do, with 
a frightful kind of intelligence in its eyes. The 
drapery fluttered on the still outstretched arm of 
the" tall object near the window; — a crack of this 
was open, no doubt, and some breath of wind 
stirred the hanging folds. In my excited state, I 
seemed to see something ominous in thut arm 
pointing to the heavens. I thought of the figures 
in the Dance of Death at Basle, and that other 
on the panels of the covered Bridge at Lucerne; 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 335 

and it seemed to me that the grim mask who 
mingles with every crowd and glides over every 
threshold was pointing the sick man to his far 
home, and would soon stretch out his bony hand 
and lead him or drag him on the unmeasured 
journey towards it. 

The fancy had possession of me, and I shivered 
again as when I first entered the chamber. The 
picture and the shrouded shape; I saw only these 
two objects. Tkey were enough. The house was 
deadly still, and the night-wind, blowing through 
an open window, struck me as from a field of ice, 
at the moment I passed into the creaking corridor. 
As I turned into the common passage, a white 
figure, holding a lamp, stood full before me. I 
thought at first it was one of those images made 
to stand in niches and hold a light in their hands. 
But the illusion was momentary, and my eyes 
speedily recovered from the shock of the bright 
flame and snowy drapery to see that the figure 
was a breathing one. It was Iris, in one of her 
statue-trances. She had come down, whether sleep- 
ing or waking, I knew not at first, led by an in- 
stinct that told her she was wanted, — or, possibly, 
having overheard and interpreted the sound of our 
movements, — or, it may be, having learned from 
the servant that there was trouble which might 
ask for a woman's hand. I sometimes think 
women have a sixth sense, which tells them that 



336 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

others, whom they cannot see or hear, are in suf- 
fering. How surely we find them at the bedside 
of the dying! How strongly does Nature plead 
for them, that we should draw our first breath in 
their arms, as we sigh away our last upon their 
faithful breasts ! 

With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, 
dressed as the starlight knew her, and the morn- 
ing when she rose from slumber, save that she 
had twisted a scarf round her Jong dress, she 
stood still as a stone before me, holding in one 
hand a lighted coil of wax-taper, and in the other 
a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to 
her, as if she had been a figure of marble, and 
she did not stir. There was no breach of pro- 
priety then, to scare the Poor Relation with and 
breed scandal out of. She had been " warned in 
a dream," doubtless suggested by her waking 
knowledge and the sounds which had reached her 
exalted sense. There was nothing more natural 
than that she should have risen and girdled her 
waist, and lighted her taper, and found the silver 
goblet with " Ex dono pupillorum " on it, from 
which she had taken her milk and possets through 
all her childish years, and so gone blindly out to 
find her place at the bedside, — a Sister of Charity 
without the cap and rosary ; nay, unknowing 
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide, 
blank eyes seeing nothing but the vision that 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 337 

beckoned her along. — Well, I must wake her from 
her slumber or trance. — I called her name, but she 
did not heed my voice. 

The Devil put it into my head that I would 
kiss one handsome young girl before 1 died, and 
now was my chance. She never would know it, 
and I should carry the remembrance of it with 
me into the grave, and a rose perhaps grow out 
of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovel's, 
in memory of that immortal moment! Would it 
wake her from her trance? and would she see me 
in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and 
despise me ever after ? Or should I carry off my 
trophy undetected, and always from that time say 
to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of 
youth and the splendor of beauty, " My lips have 
touched those roses and made their sweetness 
mine forever"? You think my cheek was flushed, 
perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this 
midnight flash of opportunity. On the contrary, I 
believe I was pale, very pale, and I know that I 
trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the 
fiercest, — it is the violence of the chill that gives 
the measure of the fever ! The fighting-boy of our 
school always turned white when he went out to 
a pitched battle with the bully of some neighbor- 
ing village; but we knew what his bloodless cheeks 
meant, — the blood was all in his stout heart, — ■ 
he was a slight boy, and there was not enough 

15 



338 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

to redden his face and fill his heart both at 
once. 

Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight 
matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart 
of a quiet person something more than juvenile 
and something less than senile, as to whether he 
should be guilty of an impropriety, and, if he 
were, whether he would get caught in his indis- 
cretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that 
Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has 
lasted four hundred years, and put it into the 
head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria, 
or Eugenie would do as much by him, if she 
happened to pass him when he was asleep. And 
have we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the 
young John Milton tingled under the lips of some 
high-born Italian beauty, who, I believe, did not 
think to leave her card by the side of the slum- 
bering youth, but has bequeathed the memory of 
her pretty deed to all coming time ? The sound 
of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but 
its echo lasts a deal longer. 

There is one disadvantage which the man of 
philosophical habits of mind suffers, as compared 
with the man of action. While he is taking an 
enlarged and rational view of the matter before 
him, he lets his chance slip through hi? fingers. 
Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had 
made up my mind what I was going to do 
about it. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 339 

When I remember how charmingly she looked, 
I don't blame myself at all for being tempted; 
but if I had been fool enough to yield to the im- 
pulse, I should certainly have been ashamed to 
tell of it. She did not know what to make of it, 
finding herself there alone, in such guise, and me 
staring at her. She looked down at her white 
robe and bare feet, and colored, — then at the 
goblet she held in her hand, — then at the taper; 
and at last her thoughts seemed to clear up. 

I know it all, — she said. — He is going to die, 
and I must go and sit by him. Nobody will care 
for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to 
care for. 

I assured her that nothing was needed for him 
that night but rest, and persuaded her that the 
excitement of her presence could only do harm. 
Let him sleep, and he would very probably awake 
better in the morning. There was nothing to be 
said, for I spoke with authority; and the young 
girl glided away with noiseless step and sought 
her own chamber. 

The tremor passed away from my limbs, and 
the blood began to burn in my cheeks. The 
beautiful image which had so bewitched me faded 
gradually from my imagination, and I returned to 
the still perplexing mysteries of my little neigh- 
bor's chamber. All was still there now. No 
plaintive sounds, no monotonous murmurs, no 



340 THE inOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

shutting of windows and doors at strange hours, 
as if sonnething or somebody were coming in or 
going out, or there was something to be hidden 
in those dark mahogany presses. Is there an inner 
apartment that I have not seen ? The way in 
which the house is built might admit of it. As I 
thought it over, I at once imagined a Bluebeard's 
chamber. Suppose, for instance, that the narrow 
bookshelves to the right are really only a masked 
door, such as we remember leading to the private 
study of one of our most distinguished townsmen, 
who loved to steal away from his stately library 
to that little silent cell. If this were lighted from 
above, a person or persons might pass their days 
there without attracting attention from the house- 
hold, and wander where they pleased at night, — 
to Copp's-Hill burial-ground, if they liked, — I 
said to myself, laughing, and pulling the bed- 
clothes over my head. There is no logic in su- 
perstitious fancies any rr^ore than in dreams. A 
she-ghost wouldn't want an inner chamber to her- 
self. A live woman, with a valuable soprano 
voice, wouldn't start off at night to sprain her 
ankles over the old graves of the North-End 
cemetery. 

It is all very easy for you, middle-aged reader, 
sitting over this page in the broad daylight, to 
call me by all manner of asinine and anserine un- 
christian names, because I had these fancies run- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 341 

ning through my head. I don't care much for 
your abuse. The question is not, what it is rea- 
sonable for a man to think about, but what. he 
actually does think about, in the dark, and when 
he is alone, and his whole body seems but one 

(great nerve of hearing, and he sees the phospho- 
rescent flashes of his own eyeballs as they turn 
suddenly in the direction of the last strange noise, 
— what he actually does think about, as he lies 
i and recalls all the wild stories his head is full of, 
I his fancy hinting the most alarming conjectures to 
account for the simplest facts about him, his com- 
I mon-sense laughing them to scorn the next minute, 
) but his mind still returning to them, under one 
shape or another, until he gets very nervous and 
foolish, and remembers how pleasant it used to be 
to have his mother come and tuck him up and 
go and sit within call, so that she could hear him 
at any minute, if he got very much scared and 
wanted her. Old babies that we are ! 

Daylight will clear up all that lamp-light has 
left doubtful. I longed for the morning to come, 
for I was more curious than ever. So, between 
my fancies and anticipations, I had but a poor 
night of it, and came down tired to the breakfast- 
table. My visit was not to be made until after 
this morning hour; — there was nothing urgent, so 
the servant was ordered to tell me. 

It was the first breakfast at which the high 



842 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

chair at the side of Ms had been unoccupied. — > 
You might jest as well take away that chair,— 
said our landlady, — he'll never want it again. He 
acts like a man that's struck with death, 'n' I 
don't believe he'll ever come out of his chamber 
till he's laid out and brought down a corpse.^ 
These good women do put things so plainly ! 
There were two or three words in her short re- 
mark that always sober people, and" suggest si- 
lence or brief moral reflections. 

Life is dreadful uncerting, — said the Poor 

Relation, — and pulled in her social tentacles to 
concentrate her thoughts on this fact of human 
history. 

If there was anything a fellah could do, — 

said the young man John, so called, — a fellah 'd 
like the chance o' helpin' a little cripple like that. 
He looks as if he couldn't turn over any handier 
than a turtle that's laid on his back ; and I guess 
there a'n't many people that know how to lift 
better than I do. Ask him if he don't want any 
watchers. I don't mind settin' up any more 'n' 
a cat-owl. I was up all night twice last month. 

[My private opinion is, that there was no small 
amount of punch absorbed on those two occasions, 
which I think I heard of at the time ; — but the 
offer is a kind one, and it isn't fair to question 
how he would like sitting up without the punch 
and the company and the songs and smoking. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 343 

He means what he says, and it would be a more 
considerable achievement for him to sit quietly all 
night by a sick man than for a good many other 
people. I tell you this odd thing : there are a 
good many persons, who, through the habit of 
making other folks uncomfortable, by finding fault 
with all their cheerful enjoyments, at last get up a 
kind of hostility to comfort in general, even in 
their own persons. The correlative to loving our 
neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we 
hate our neighbors. Look at old misers ; first 
they starve their dependants, and then themselves. 
So I think it more for a lively young fellow to 
be ready to play nurse than for one of those use- 
ful but forlorn martyrs who have taken a spite 
against themselves and love to gratify it by fast- 
ing and watching.] 

The time came at last for me to make my 

visit. I found Iris sitting by the Little Gentle- 
man's pillow. To my disappointment, the room 
was darkened. He did not like the light, and 
would have the shutters kept nearly closed. It 
was good enough for me ; — w^hat business had I 
to be indulging my curiosity, when I had nothing 
to do but to exercise such skill as I possessed for 
the benefit of my patient? There was not much 
to be said or done in such a case ; but I spoke 
as encouragingly as I could, as I think we are 
always bound to do. He did not seem to pay 



344 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

any very anxious attention, but the poor girl 
listened as if her own life and more than her 
own life were depending on the words I uttered. 
She followed me out of the room, when I had 
got through my visit. 

How long? — she said. 

Uncertain. Any time; to-day, — next week, — 
next month, — I answered. — One of those cases 
where the issue is not doubtful, but may be sud- 
den or slow. 

The women of the house were kind, as women 
always are in trouble. But Iris pretended that 
nobody could spare the time as well as she, and 
kept her place, hour after hour, until the landlady 
insisted that she'd be killin' herself, if she begun 
at that rate, 'n' haf to give up, if she didn't 
want to be clean beat out in less 'n a week. 

At the table we were graver than common. 
The high chair was set back against the wall, 
and a gap left between that of th3 young girl and 
her nearest neighbor's on the right. But the next 
morning, to our great surprise, that good-looking 
young Marylander had very quietly moved his 
own chair to the vacant place. I thought he was 
creeping down that way, but I was not prepared 
for a leap spanning such a tremendous parenthesis 
of boarders as this change of position included. 
There was no denying that the youth and maiden 
were a handsome pair, as they sat side by side. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 345 

But whatever the young girl may have thought 
of her new neighbor, she never seemed for a mo- 
ment to forget the poor little friend who had been 
taken from her side. There are women, and even 
girls, with whom it is of no use to talk. One 
might as well reason with a bee as to the form 
of his cell, or with an oriole as to the construc- 
tion of his swinging nest, as try to stir these 
creatures from their own way of doing their own 
work. It was not a question with Iris, whether 
she was entitled by any special relation or by the 
fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She 
was a wilful creature that must have her way 
in this matter. And it so proved that it called 
for much patience and long endurance to carry 
through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the 
painful pleasures, that she had chosen as her 
share in the household where accident had thrown 
her. She had that genius of ministration which is 
the special province of certain women, marked 
even among their helpful sisters by a soft, low 
voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering 
smile, and a ready self-surrender to the objects of 
their care, which such trifles as their own food, 
sleep, or habits of any kind never presume to 
interfere with. 

Day after day, and too often through the long 
watches of the night, she kept her place by the 
pillow. — That girl will kill herself over me. Sir, 

15* 



346 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— said the poor Little Gentleman to me, one 
day, — she will kill herself, Sir, if you don't call 
in all the resources of your art to get me off as 
soon as may be. I shall wear her out, Sir, with 
sitting in this close chamber and watching whea 
she ought to be sleeping, if you leave me to the 
care of Nature without dosing me. 

This was rather strange pleasantry, under the cir 
cumstances. But there are certain persons whosi* 
existence is so out of parallel with the larger laws 
in the midst of which it is moving, that life be- 
comes to them as death and death as life. — How 
am I getting along? — he said, another morning. 
He lifted his shrivelled hand, with the death's-head 
ring on it, and looked at it with a sad sort of 
complacency. By this one movement, which I 
have seen repeatedly of late, I know that his 
thoughts have gone before to another condition, 
and that he is, as it were, looking back on the 
infirmities of the body as accidents of the past. 
For, when he was well, one might see him often 
looking at the handsome hand wath the flaming 
jewel on one of its fingers. The single well- 
shaped limb w'as the source of that pleasure which 
in some form or other Nature almost always 
grants to her least richly endowed children. Hand- 
some hair, eyes, complexion, feature, form, hand, 
foot, pleasant voice, strength, grace, agility, intelli- 
gence, — how few there are that have not just 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 347 

enough of one at least of these gifts to show 
them that the good Mother, busy with her mil- 
lions of children, has not quite forgotten them ! 
But now he was thinking of that other state, 
where, free from all mortal impediments, the mem- 
ory of his sorrowful burden should be only as 
that of the case he has shed to the insect whose 
" deep-damasked wings " beat off the golden dust 
of the lily-anthers, as he flutters in the ecstasy of 
his new life over their full-blown summer glories. 
No human being can rest for any time in a 
state of equilibrium, where the desire to live and 
that to depart just balance each other. If one has 
a house, which he has lived and always means to 
live in, he pleases himself with the thought of all 
the conveniences it offers him, and thinks little of 
its wants and imperfections. But once having 
made up his mind to move to a better, every in- 
commodity starts out upon him, until the very 
ground-plan of it seems to have changed in his 
mind, and his thoughts and affections, each one 
of them packing up its little bundle of circum- 
stances, have quitted their several chambers and 
nooks and migrated to the new home, long before 
its apartments are ready to receive their bodily 
tenant. It is so with the body. Most persons 
have died before they expire, — died to all earthly 
longings, so that the last breath is only, as it 
were, the locking of the door of the already de« 



348 THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

serted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with 
which the great majority of dying persons await 
this locking of those gates of life through which 
its airy angels have been going and coming,, from 
the moment of the first cry, is familiar to those 
who have been often called upon to witness the 
last period of life. Almost always there is a pre- 
paration made by Nature for unearthing a soul, 
just as on the smaller scale there is for the re- 
moval of a milk-tooth. The roots which hold 
human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted 
from its place. Some of the dying are weary and 
want rest, the idea of which is almost inseparable 
in the universal mind from death. Some are in 
pain, and want to be rid of it, even though the 
anodyne be dropped, as in the legend, from the 
sword of the Death-Angel. Some are stupid, 
mercifully narcotized that they may go to sleep 
without long tossing about. And some are strong 
in faith and hope, so, that, as they draw near the 
next world, they would fain hurry toward it, as 
the caravan moves faster over the sands when the 
foremost travellers send word along the file that 
water is in sight. Though each little party that 
follows in a foot-track of its own will have it that 
the water to which others think they are hasten- 
ing is a mirage, not the less has it been true in 
all ages and for human beings of every creed 
which recognized a future, that those who have 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 349 

fallen worn out by their march through the Desert 
have dreamed at least of a River of Life, and 
thought they heard its murmurs as they lay 
dying. 

The change from the clinging to the present to 
the welcoming of the future comes very soon, for 
the most part, after all hope of life is extin- 
guished, provided this be left in good degree to 
Nature, and not insolently and cruelly forced 
upon those who are attacked by illness, on the 
strength of that odious foreknowledge often im- 
parted by science, before the white fruit whose 
core is ashes, and which we call death, has set 
beneath the pallid and drooping flower of sick- 
ness. There is' a singular sagacity very often 
shown in a patient's estimate of his own vital 
force. His physician knows the state of his ma- 
terial frame well enough, perhaps, — that this or 
that organ is more or less impaired or disinte- 
grated ; but the patient has a sense that he can 
hold out so much longer, — sometimes that he 
must and will live for a while, though by the logic 
of disease he ought to die without any delay. 

The Little Gentleman continued to fail, until it 
became plain that his remaining days were few. 
I told the household what to expect. There was 
a good deal of kind feeling expressed among the 
boarders, in various modes, according to their 
characters and style of sympathy. The landlady 



350 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

was urgent that he should try a certain nostrum 
which had saved somebody's life in jest sech a 
case. The Poor Relation wanted me to carry, as 
from her, a copy of " Allein's Alarm," etc. I ob- 
jected to the title, reminding her that it offended 
people of old, so that more than twice as many 
of the book were sold when they changed the 
name to " A Sure Guide to Heaven." The good 
old gentleman whom I have mentioned before has 
come to the time of life when many old men cry 
easily, and forget their tears as children do. — He 
was a worthy gentleman, — he said, — a very 
worthy gentleman, but unfortunate, — very unfor- 
tunate. Sadly deformed about the spine and the 
feet. Had an impression that the late Lord Byron 
had some malformation of this kind. Had heerd 
there was something the matter with the ankle- 
j'ints of that nobleman, but he was a man of 
talents. This gentleman seemed to be a man of 
talents. Could not always agree with his state- 
ments, — thought he was a little over-partial to 
this city, and had some free opinions ; but was 
sorry to lose him, — and if — there was anything 

— he — could . 'In the midst of 

these kind expressions, the gentleman with the 
diamond^ the Koh-i-noor, as we called him, asked, 
in a very unpleasant sort of way, how the old 
boy was likely to cut up, — meaning what money 
our friend was going to leave behind. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 351 

The young fellow John spoke up, to the effect 
that this was a diabolish snobby question, when a 
man was dying and not dead. — To this the Koh- 
i-noor replied, by asking if the other meant to in- 
sult him. — Whereto the yoiing man John. rejoined 
that he had no particul'r intentions one way or 
t'other. — The Koh-i-noor then suggested the young 
man's stepping out into the yard, that he, the 
speaker, might " slap his chops." — Let 'em alone, 
— ^^said young Maryland, — it'll soon be over, and 
they won't hurt each other much. — So they went 
out. 

The Koh-i-noor entertained the very common 
idea, that, when one quarrels with another, the 
simple thing to do is to knock the man doivn, and 
there is the end of it. Now those who have 
watched such encounters are aware of two things : 
first, that* it is not so easy to knock a man down 
as it is to talk about it; secondly, that, if you do 
happen to knock a man down, there is a very 
good chance that he will be angry, and get up 
and give you a thrashing. 

So the Koh-i-noor thought he would begin, as 
soon as they got into the yard, by knocking his 
man down, and with this intention swung his 
arm round after the fashion of rustics and those 
unskilled in the noble art, expecting the young 
fellow John to drop when his fist, having com- 
pleted a quarter of a circle, should come in con- 



352 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tact with the side of that young man's head. 
Unfortunately for this theory, it happens that a 
blow struck out straight is as much shorter, and 
therefore as much quicker than the rustic's swing- 
ing blow, as the radius is shorter than the quarter 
of a circle. The mathematical and mechanical 
corollary was, that the Koh-i-noor felt something 
hard bring up suddenly against his right eye, 
which something he could have sworn was a pav- 
ing-stone, judging by his sensations ; and as this 
threw his person somewhat backwards, and the 
young man John jerked his own head back a little, 
the swinging blow had nothing to stop it; and 
as the Jewel staggered between the hit he got and 
the blow he missed, he tripped and "went to 
grass," so far as the back-yard of our boarding- 
house was provided with that vegetable. It was 
a signal illustration of that fatal mistake, so fre- 
quent in young and ardent natures with incon- 
spicuous calves and negative pectorals, that they 
can settle most little quarrels on the spot by 
"knocking the man down." 

We are in the habit of handling our faces so 
carefully, that a heavy blow, taking effect on that 
portion of the surface, produces a most unpleasant 
surprise, which is accompanied with odd sensa- 
tions, as of seeing sparks, and a kind of electrical 
or ozone-like odor, half-sulphurous in character, 
and which has given rise to a very vulgar and 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 353 

profans threat sometimes heard from the lips of 
bullies. A person not used to pugilistic gestures 
does not instantly recover from this surprise. The 
Koh-i-noor, exasperated by his failure, and still a 
litis confused by the smart hit he had received, 
but furious, and confident of victory over a young 
fellow a good deal lighter than himself, made a 
desperate rush to bear down ail before him and 
finish the contest at once. That is the way all 
angry greenhorns and incompetent persons attempt 
to settle matters. It doesn't do, if the other fellow 
is only cool, moderately quick, and has a very 
little science. It didn't do this time ; for, as the 
assailant rushed in with his arms flying every- 
where, like the vans of a windmill, he ran a 
prominent feature of his face against a fist which 
was travelling in the other direction, and imme- 
diately after struck the knuckles of the young 
man's other fist a severe blow with the part of 
his person known as the epigastrium to one branch 
of science and the bread-basket to another. This 
second round closed the battle. The Koh-i-noor 
had got enough, which in such cases is more than 
as good as a feast. The young fellow asked him 
if he was satisfied, and held out his hand. But 
the other sulked, and muttered something about 
revenge. — Jest as y' like, — said the young man 
John. — Clap a slice o' raw beefsteak on to that 
mouse o' yours 'n' 



354 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

{Mouse is a technical term for a bluish, oblong, 
rounded elevation occasioned by running one's 
forehead or eyebrow against another's knuckles,) 
The young fellow was particularly pleased that he 
had had an opportunity of trying his proficiency in 
the art of self-defence without the gloves. The Koh- 
i-noor did not favor us with his company for a 
day or two, being confined to his chamber, it was 
said, by a slight feverish attack. He was chop- 
fallen always after this, and got negligent in his 
person. The impression must have been a deep 
one ; for it was observed, that, when he came 
down again, his moustache and whiskers had 
turned visibly white — about the roots. In short, it 
disgraced him, and rendered still more conspicuous 
a tendency to drinking, of which he had been for 
some time suspected. This, and the disgust which 
a young lady naturally feels at hearing that her 
lover has been " licked by a fellah not half his 
size," induced the landlady's daughter to take that 
decided step which produced a change in the pro- 
gramme of her career I may hereafter allude to. 

I never thought he would come to good, when 
I heard him attempting to sneer at an unoffend- 
ing city so respectable as Boston. After a man 
begins to attack the State-House, when he gets 
bitter abotjt the Frog-Pond, you may be sure 
there is not much left of him. Poor Edgar Poe \ 
died in the hospital soon after he got into this 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 355 

way of talking ; and so sure as you find an un- 
fortunate fellow reduced to this pass, you had 
better begin praying for him, and stop lending 
liira money, for he is on his last legs. Remember 
poor Edgar ! He is dead and gone ; but the 
State-House has its cupola fresh-gilded, and the 
Frog-Pond has got a fountain that squirts up a 
hundred feet into the air and glorifies that humble 
sheet with a fine display of provincial rainbows. 

I cannot fulfil my promise in this number. 

I expected to gratify your curiosity, if you have 
become at all interested in these puzzles, doubts, 
fancies, whims, or whatever you choose to call 
them, of mine. Next month you shall hear all 
about it. 

It was evening, and I was going to the 



sick-chamber. As I paused at the door before 
entering, I heard a sweet voice singing. It \vas 
not the wild melody I had sometimes heard at 
midnight : — no, this was the voice of Iris, and I 
could distinguish every word. I had seen the 
verses in her book; the melody was new to me. 
Let me finish my page with them. 



356 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



HYMN OF TRUST. 

O Love Divino, that stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, 

Oil Thee we cast each earthborn care, 
We smile at paiu while Thou art near ! 

Though long the weary way we tread, 
And sorrow crown each lingering year, 

No path we shun, no darkness dread, 

Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near , 

When drooping pleasure turns to grief, 
And trembling faith is changed to fear, 

The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf 
Shall softly tell us. Thou art near ! 

On Thee we fling our burdening woe, 

O Love Divine, forever dear, 
Content to suffer, while we know. 

Living and dying, Thou art ncai' ! 



XII. 



A YOUNG fellow, born of good stock, in one of 
the more thoroughly civilized portions of these 
United States of America, bred in good principles, 
inheriting a social position which makes him at 
his ease everywhere, means sufficient to educate 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 357 

him thoroughly without taking away the stimulus 
to vigorous exertion, and with a good opening in 
some honorable path of labor, is the finest sight 
our private satellite has had the opportunity of 
inspecting on the planet to which she belongs. In 
some respects it was better to be a young Greek. 
If we may trust the old marbles, — my friend with 
his arm stretched over my head, above there, (in 
plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one 
may see at the principal sculpture gallery of this 
metropolis, — those Greek young men were of 
supreme beauty. Their close curls, their elegantly 
set heads, column-like necks, straight noses, short, 
curled lips, firm chins, deep chests, light flanks, 
large muscles, small joints, were finer than any- 
thing we ever see. It may well be questioned 
whether the human shape will ever present itself 
again in a race of such perfect symmetry. But 
the life of the youthful Greek was local, not 
planetary, like that of the young American. He 
had a string of legends, in place of our Gospels. 
He had no printed books, no newspaper, no steam 
caravans, no forks, no soap, none of the thousand 
cheap conveniences which have become matters 
of necessity to our modern civilization. Above all 
things, if he aspired to know as well as to enjoy, 
he found knowledge not diffused everywhere about 
him, so that a day's labor would buy him more 
wisdom than a year could master, 'but held in 



358 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

private hands, hoarded in precious manuscripts, to 
be sought for only as gold is sought in narrow 
fissures and in the beds of brawlinof streams. 
Never, since man came into this atmosphere of 
oxygen and azote, was there anything like the 
condition of the young American of the nine- 
teenth century. Having in possession or in pros- 
pect the best part of half a world, .with all its cli- 
mates and soils to choose from ; equipped with 
wings of fire and smoke that fly with him day 
and night, so that he, counts his journey not in 
miles, but in degrees, and sees" the seasons change 
as the wild fowl sees them in his annual flights ; 
with huge leviathans always ready to take him on 
their broad backs and push behind them with 
their pectoral or caudal fins the waters that seam 
the continent or separate the hemispheres; heir of 
all old civilizations, founder of that new one 
which, if all the prophecies of the human heart 
are not lies, is to be the noblest, as it is the last; 
isolated in space from the races that are governed 
by dynasties whose divine right grows out of 
human wrong, yet knit into the most absolute 
solidarity with mankind of all times and places 
by the one great thought he inherits as his na- 
tional birthright; free to form and express his 
opinions on almost every subject, and assured that 
he will soon acquire the last franchise which men 
withhold from man, — that of stating the laws of 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 359 

his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts 
without hindrance except from clearer views of 
truth, — he seems to want nothing for a large, 
wholesome, noble, beneficent life. In fact, the 
chief danger is that he will think the whole planet 
is made for him, and forget that there are some 
possibilities left in the debris of the old-world civil- 
ization which deserve a certain respectful consid- 
eration at his hands. 

The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild 
continent are in some measure done for him by 
those who have gone before. Society has sub- 
divided itself enough to have a place for every 
form of talent. Thus, if a man show the least 
sign of ability as a sculptor or a painter, for in- 
stance, he finds the means of education and a 
demand for his services. Even a man who knows 
nothing but science will be provided for, if he 
does not think it necessary to hang about his 
birthplace all his days, — which is a most un- 
American weakness. The apron-strings of an 
American mother are made of India-rubber. Her 
boy belongs where he is wanted ; and that young 
Marylander of ours spoke for all our young men, 
when he said that his home was wherever the 
stars and stripes blew over his head. 

And that leads me to say a few words of this 
young gentleman, who made that audacious move- 
ment lately which I chronicled in my last record, 



360 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

— jumping over the seats of I don't know how 
many boarders to put himself in the place which 
the Little Gentleman's absence had left vacant at 
the side of Iris. When a young man is found 
habitually at the side of any one given young 
lady, — when he lingers where she stays, and 
hastens when she leaves, — when his eyes follow 
her as she moves, and rest upon her when she is 
still, — when he begins to grow a little timid, he 
who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who 
was so gay, whenever accident finds them alone, 

— when he thinks very often of the given young 
lady, and names her very seldom, 

What do you say about it, my charming young 
expert in that sweet science in which, perhaps, a 
long experience is not the first of qualifications ? 

But we don't know anything about this 

young man, except that he is good-looking, and 
somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and 
has a generous style of nature, — all very promis- 
ing, but by no means proving that he is a proper 
lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out 
when we opened that sealed book of hers. 

Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma 

— then, if you will believe it, a very slight young 
lady, with very pretty hair and figure — came and 
told her mamma that your papa had — had — 

asked No, no, no! she couldn't say it; but 

her mother — oh, the depth of maternal sagacity ! 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 361 

— guessed it all without another word ! — When 
your mother, I say, came and told her mother she 
was engaged^ and your grandoiother told your 
grandfather, how much did they know of the inti- 
mate nature of the young gentleman to whom she 
had pledged her existence ? I will not be so hard 
as to ask how much your respected mamma knew 
at that time of the intimate nature of your re- 
spected papa, though, if we should compare a 
young gid's mcLn-as-she4hinkS'hi)n with a forty-sum- 
mered matron's man-as-shc-finds-hini^ I have my 
doubts as to whether the second would be a fac- 
simile of the first in most cases. 

The idea that in this world each young person 
is to wait until he or she finds that precise coun- 
terpart who alone of all creation was meant for 
him or her, and then fall instantly in love with 
it, is pretty enough, only it is not Nature's way. 
It is not at all essential that all pairs of human 
beings should be, as we sometimes say of partic- 
ular couples, "born for each other." Sometimes 
a man or a woman is made a great deal better 
and hap'pier in the end for having had to conquer 
the faults of the one beloved, and make the fitness 
not found at first, by gradual' assimilation. There 
is a class of good w^oraen who have no right to 
marry perfectly good men, because they have the 
power of saving those who would go to ruin but 
for the guiding providence of a good wife. I have 

16 



362 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

known many such cases. It is the most moment- 
ous question a woman is ever called upon to de- 
cide, whether the faults of the man she loves are 
beyond remedy and will drag her down, or wheth- 
er she is competent to be his earthly redeemer 
and lift him to her own level. 

A person of genius should marry a person of 
character. Genius does not herd with genius. 
The musk-deer and the civet-cat are never found 
in company. They don't care for strange scents, 
— they like plain animals better than perfumed 
ones. Nay, if you will have the kindness to no- 
tice. Nature has not gifted my lady musk-deer 
with the personal peculiarity by which her lord is 
so widely known. 

Now when genius allies itself with character, 
the world is very apt to think character has the 
best of the bargain. A brilliant woman marries a 
plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual 
mechanism; — we have all seen such cases. The 
world often stares a good deal and wonders. She 
should have taken that other, with a far more 
complex mental machinery. She might have had 
a watch with the philosophical compensation-bal- 
ance, with the metaphysical index which can split 
a second into tenths, with the musical chime 
which can turn every quarter of an hour into 
melody. She has chosen a plain one, that keeps 
good time, and that is all. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 363 

Let her alone ! She knows what she is about. 
Genias has an infinitely^ deeper reverence for char- 
acter than character can have for genius. To be 
sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its.^ 
work is a tangible product, to be bought, or had 
for nothing. It bribes the common voice to praise 
it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, 
or whatever it can please with. Character evolves 
its best products for home consumption ; but, 
mind you, it takes a deal more to feed a family 
for thirty years than to make a holiday feast for 
our neighbors once or twice in our lives. You 
talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed wom- 
an, who dies unsung and unremembered, has given 
out more of the real vital heat that keeps the life 
in human souls, without a spark flitting through 
her humble chimney to tell the world about it, 
than would set a dozen theories smoking, or a 
hundred odes simmering, in the brains of so many 
men of genius. It is in latent caloric^ if I may 
borrow a philosophical expression, that many of 
the noblest hearts give out the life that warms 
them. Cornelia's lips grow white, and her pulse 
hardly warms her thin fingers, — but she has 
melted all the ice out of the hearts of those 
young Gracchi, and her lost heat is in the blood 
of her youthful heroes. We are always valuing 
the soul's temperature by the thermometer of pub- 
lic deed or word. Yet the great sun himself. 



364 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

when he pours his noonday beams upon some 
vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal ice- 
quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never 
warms it a fraction above the Ihirty-two degrees 
of Fahrenheit that marked the moment when the 
first drop trickled down its side. 

How we all like the spirting up of a fountain, 
seemingly against the law that makes water every- 
where slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to get as 
low as the earth will let it ! That is genius. But 
what is this transient upward movement, which 
gives us the glitter and the rainbow, to that un- 
sleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever, (if the universe be 
eternal,) — the great outspread hand of God him- 
self, forcing all things down into their places, and 
keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, 
is the force of character to the fitful movements 
of genius, as they are or have been linked to each 
other in many a household, where one name was 
historic, and the other, let me say the nobler, 
unknown, save by some faint reflected ray, bor- 
rowed from its lustrous companion. 

Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the 
water, in the swell of the Chelsea ferry-boats, in 
that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which I 
love to let the great mother rock me, (I have seen 
a tall ship glide by against the tide, as if drawn 
by some invisible tow-line, with a hundred strong 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 365 

arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled, her 
streamers were drooping, she had neither side- 
wheel nor stern-wheel; still she moved on, stately, 
in serene triumph, as if with her own life. Bat £% 
knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden 
beneath the great hulk that swam so majestically, 
there was a little toiling steam-tug, with heart of 
fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close 
and dragging it bravely on; and I knew, that, if 
the little steam-tug untwined her arms and left the 
tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and 
drift hither and thither, and go off with the re- 
fluent tide, no man knows whither. And so I have 
known more than one genius, high-decked, fall- 
freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for 
the bare toiling arms, and brave, warm, beating 
heart of the faithfai little wife, that nestled close 
in his shadow, and clung to him, so that no wind 
or wave coald part them, and dragged him on 
against all the tide of circumstance, would soon 
have gone down the stream and been heard of no 
more, —j No, I am too much a lover of genius, I 
sometimes think, and too often get impatient with 
dall people, so that, in their weak talk, where 
nothing is taken for granted, I look forward to 
som.e fature possible state of development, when a 
gesture passing between a beatified haman soul 
and an archangel shall signify as much as the 
complete history of a planet, from the time when 



366 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

it curdled to the time when its sun was burned 
out. And yet, when a strong brain is weighed 
with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing 
a bubble against a wedge of gold. 

It takes a very true man to be a fitting 

companion for a woman of genius, but not a very 
great one. I am not sure that she will not em- 
broider her ideal better on a plain ground than on 
one with a brilliant pattern already worked in its 
texture. Bat as the very essence of genius is 
truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are al- 
ways ideas behind shows of fornr or language,) 
nothing is so contemptible as falsehood and pre- 
tence in its eyes. Now it is not easy to find a 
perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find 
a perfectly true man. And a woman of genius, 
who has the sagacity to choose such a one as her 
companion, shows more of the divine gift in so 
doing than in, her finest talk or her most brilliant 
work of letters or of art. 

I have been a good while coming at a secret, 
for which I wished to prepare you before telling 
it. I think there is a kindly feeling growing up 
between Iris and our young Marylander. Not 
that I suppose there is any distinct understanding 
between them, but that the affinity which has 
drawn him from the remote corner where he sat 
to the side of the young girl is quietly bringing 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 367 

their two natures together. Just now she is all 
given up to another; but when he no longer calls 
upon her daily thoughts and cares, I warn you 
not to be surprised, if this bud of friendship open 
like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a 
sudden stolen kiss, and lo ! the flower of. full- 
blown love lies unfolded before you. 

And now the days had come for our little 
friend, whose whims and weaknesses had inter- 
ested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to 
make ready for that long journey which is easier 
to the cripple than to the strong man, and on 
which none enters so willingly as he who has 
borne the life-long load of infirmity during his 
earthly pilgrimage. At this point, under most cir- 
cumstances, I would close the doors and draw the 
veil of privacy before the chamber where the birth 
which we call death, out of life into the unknown 
world, is working its mystery. But this friend of 
ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act 
of his life was mainly in harmony with the rest 
of its drama, I do not here feel the force of the 
objection commonly lying against that death-bed 
literature which forms the staple of a certain por- 
tion of the press. Let me explain what I mean, 
so that my readers may think for themselves a 
little, before they accuse me of hasty expressions. 

The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulae 






363 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

for its d^^insf children, to which almost all of Ihem 
attach the greatest importance. There is hardly 
a criminal so abandoned that 4ie is not anxious to 
eceive the "consolations of religion'' in his last 
ours. Even if he be senseless, but still living, I 
think that the form is gone through with, just as 
baptism is administered to the unconscious new- 
born child. Now we do not quarrel with these 
forms. We look with reverence and affection 
upon all symbols which give peace and comfort 
to our fellow-creatures. But the value of the 
new-born child's passive consent to the ceremony 
is null, as testimony to the truth of a doctrine. 
The automatic closing of a dying man's lips on 
the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of 
the Real Presence, or any other dogma. And, 
speaking generally, the evidence of dying men in 
favor of any belief is to be received with great 
caution. 

They commonly tell the truth about their pres- 
ent feelings, no doubt. A dying man's deposition 
about anything he knoivs is good evidence. But 
it is of much less consequence what a man thinks 
and says when he is changed by pain, weakness, 
apprehension, than what he thinks when he is 
truly and wholly himself Most murderers die in 
a very pious frame of mind, expecting to go to 
glory at once ; yet no man believes he shall meet 
a larger average of pirates and cut-throats in the 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 369 

streets of the New Jerusalem than of honest folks 
that died in their beds. 

Unfortunately, there has been a very great ten- 
dency to make capital of various kinds out of 
dying men's speeches. The lies that have been 
put into their mouths for this purpose are endless. 
The prime minister, whose last breath .was spent 
in scolding his nurse, dies with a magnificent 
apothegm on his lips, — manufactured by a re- 
porter. Addison gets up a tableau and utters an 
admirable sentiment, — or somebody makes the 
posthumous dying epigram for him. The inco- 
herent babble of green fields is translated into the 
language of stately sentiment. One would think, 
all that dying men had to do was to say the 
prettiest thing they could, — to make their rhetor- 
ical point, — and then bow themselves politely out 
of the world. 

Worse than this is the torturing of dying people 
to get their evidence in favor of this or that favor- 
ite belief. The camp-followers of proselyting sects 
have come in at the close of every life where they 
could get in, to strip the languishing soul of its 
thoughts, and carry them off as spoils. The Ro- 
man Catholic or other priest who insists on the 
reception of his formula means kindly, we trust, 
and very commonly succeeds in getting the ac- 
quiescence of the subject of his spiritual surgery. 
But do not let us take the testimony of people 

16* 



370 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

who are in the worst condition to form opinions 
as evidence of the truth or falsehood of that 
which they accept. A lame man's opinion of 
dancing is not good for much. A poor fellow 
who can neither eat nor drink, who is sleepless 
and full of pains, whose flesh has wasted from 
him, whose blood is like water, who is gasping 
for breath, is not in a condition to judge fairly of 
human life, which in all its main adjustments is 
intended for men in a normal, healthy condition. 
It is a remark I have heard from the wise Patri- 
arch of the Medical Profession among us, that 
the moral condition of patients with disease above 
the great breathing-muscle, the diaphragm, is much 
more hopeful than that of patients with disease 
below it, in the digestive organs. Many an honest 
ignorant man has given us pathology when he 
thought he was giving us psychology. With this 
preliminary caution I shall proceed to the story 
of the Little Gentleman's leaving us. 

When the divinity-student found that our fel- 
low-boarder was not likely to remain long with 
us, he, being a young man of tender conscience 
and kindly nature, was not a little exercised on 
his behalf. It was undeniable that on several 
occasions the Little Gentleman had expressed 
himself with a good deal of freedom on a class 
of subjects which, according to the divinity-stu- 
dent, he had no right to form an opinion upon. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 371 

He therefore considered his future welfare in jeop- 
ardy. 

The Muggletonian sect have a very odd way 
of dealing with people. If I, the Professor, will 
only give in to the Muggletonian doctrine, there 
shall be no question through all that persuasion 
that I am competent to judge of that doctrine ; 
nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its truth, 
while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testi- 
mony in its behalf; but if I utter any ever so 
slight Anti- Muggletonian sentiment, then I become 
incompetent to form any opinion on the matter. This, 
you cannot fail to observe, is exactly the way the 
pseudo-sciences go to work, as explained in my 
Lecture on Phrenology. Now I hold that he 
whose testimony would be accepted in behalf of 
the Muggletonian doctrine has a right to be heard 
against it. Whoso offers me any article of belief 
for my signature implies that I am competent to 
form an opinion upon it ; and if my positive testi- 
mony in its favor is of any value, then my nega- 
tive testimony against it is also of value. 

I thought my young friend's attitude was a 
little too much like that of the Muggletonians. I 
also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest 
somebody should " unsettle " somebody's faith, — 
as if faith did not require exercise as much as 
any other living thing, and were not all the better 
for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean 



372 THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that it would be fair to bother Bridget, the wild 
Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the centenarian, or any 
other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons 
who proclaim a belief which passes judgment on 
their neighbors must be ready to have it " un- 
settled," that is, questioned, at all times and by 
anybody, — just as those who set up bars across a 
thoroughfare must expect to have them taken 
down by every one who wants to pass, if he is 
strong enough. 

Besides, to think of trying to water-proof the 
American mind against the questions that Heaven 
rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of 
our new conditions. If to question everything be 
unlawful and dangerous, we had better undeclare 
our independence at once ; for what the Declara- 
tion means is the right to question everything, 
even the truth of its own fundamental proposi- 
tion. 

The old-world order of things is an arrangement 
of locks and canals, where everything depends on 
keeping the gates shut, and so holding the upper 
waters at their level ; but the system under which 
the young republican American is born trusts the 
whole unimpeded tide of life to the great ele- 
mental influences, as the vast rivers of the con- 
tinent settle their own level in obedience to the 
laws that govern the planet and the spheres that 
surround it. 



THE PROFESSOK AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 373 

The divinity-student was not quite up to the 
idea of the commonwealth, as our young friend 
the Marylander, for instance, understood it. He 
could not get rid of that notion of private prop- 
erty in truth, with the right to fence it in, and 
put up a sign-board, thus: — 



ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED OFF THESE 



He took the young Marylander to task for going 
to the Church of the Galileans, where he had 
several times accompanied Iris of late. 

I am a Churchman, — the young man said, — 
by education and habit. I love my old Church 
for many reasons, but most of all because I think 
it has educated me out of its own forms into the 
spirit of its highest teachings. I think I belong 
to the " Broad Church," if any of you can tell 
what that means. 

I had the rashness to attempt to answer the 
question myself. — Some say the Broad Church 
means the collective mass of good people of all 
denominations. Others say that such a definition 
is nonsense; that a church is an organization, 
and the scattered good folks are no organization 
at all. They think that men will eventually come 
together on the basis of one or two or more com- 
mon articles of belief, and form a great unity. 
Do they see what this amounts to? It means an 



374 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

equal division of intellect! It is mental agrarian- 
ism I a thing that never was and never will be, 
until national and individual idiosyncrasies have 
ceased to exist. The man of thirty-nine beliefs 
holds the man of one belief a pauper ; he is not 
going to give up thirty-eight of them for the sake 
of fraternizing with the other in the temple which 
bears on its front, " Deo erexit Voltaire. ^^ A 
church is a garden, I have heard it said, and the 
illustration was neatly handled. Yes, and there is 
no such thing as a broad garden. It must be 
fenced in, and whatever is fenced in is naiTOW. 
You cannot have arctic and tropical plants grow- 
ing together in it, except by the forcing system, 
which is a mighty narrow piece of business. You 
can't make a village or a parish or a family 
think alike, yet you suppose that you can make a 
world pinch its beliefs or pad them to a single 
pattern ! Why, the very life of an ecclesiastical 
organization is a life of induction^ a state of per- 
petually disturbed equilibrium kept up by another 
charged body in the neighborhood. If the two 
bodies touch and share their respective charges, 
down goes the index of the electrometer! 

Do you know that every man has a religious 
belief peculiar to himself? Smith is always a 
Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of 
knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of 
divinity. And Brown has from time immemorial 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 375 

been trying to bum liim, to excommunicate him, 
to anonymous-article him, because he did not 
take in Brown's-worth of luiowledge, truth, beauty, 
divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a pint- 
pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a 
pint. Iron is essentially the same everywhere and 
always; but the sulphate of iron is never the 
same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invari- 
able ; but the Smithate of truth must always differ 
from the Broivnate of truth. 

The wider the intellect, the larger and "simpler 
the expressions 'in which its knowledge is em- 
bodied. The inferior race, the degraded and en- 
slaved people, the small-minded individual, live in 
the details which to larger minds and more ad- 
vanced tribes of men reduce themselves to axioms 
and laws. As races and individual minds mast 
always differ just as sulphates and carbonates do, 
I cannot see ground for expecting the Broad 
Church to be founded on any fusion of intellect- 
ual beliefs, which of course implies that those who 
hold the larger number of doctrines as essential 
shall come down to those who hokl the smaller 
number. These doctrines are to the negative aris- 
tocracy what the quarterings of their coats are to 
the positive orders of nobility. 

The Broad Church, I think, will never be based 
on anything that requires the use of language. 
Freemasonry gives an idea of such a church, and 



376 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a brother is known and ca1*ed for in a strange 
land where no word of his can be understood. 
The apostle of this church may be a deaf mute 
carrying a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow- 
creature. The cup of cold water does not require 
to be translated for a foreigner to understand it. 
I am afraid the only Broad Church possible is 
one that has its creed in the heart, and not in the 
head, — that we shall know its members by their 
fruits, and not by their words. If you say this 
communion of well-doers is no church, I can only 
answer, that all organized bodies have their limits 
of size, and that when we find a man a hundred 
feet high and thirty feet broad across the shoulders, 
we will look out for an organization that shall in- 
clude all Christendom. 

Some of us do practically recognize a Broad 
Church and a Narrow Church, however. The 
Narrow Church may be seen in the ship's boats 
of humanity, in the long boat, in the jolly boat, 
in the captain's gig, lying off the poor old vessel, 
thanking God that, they are safe, and reckoning 
how soon the hulk containing the mass of their 
fellow-creatures will go down. The Broad Church 
is on board, working hard at the pumps, and 
very slow to believe that the ship will be swal- 
lowed up with so many poor people in it, fastened 
down under the hatches ever since it floated. 

All this, of course, was nothing but my 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 377 

poor notion about these matters. I am simply an 
" outsider," yoa know ; only it doesn't do very 
well for a nest of Hingham boxes to talk too 
much about outsiders and insiders! 

After this talk of ours, I think these two young 
people went pretty regularly to the Church of the 
Galileans. Still they coald not keep away from 
the sweet harmonies and rhythmic litanies of 
Saint Polycarp on the great Church festival-days; 
so that, between the two, they were so much to- 
gether, that the boarders began to make remarks, 
and our landlady said to me, one day, that, though 
it was noon of her business, them that had eyes 
couldn't help seein' that there was somethin' goin' 
on between them two young people; she thought 
the young man was a very likely young man, 
though jest what his prospecs was was unbeknown 
to her; but she thought he must be doin' well, 
and rather guessed he would be able to take care 
of a femily, if he didn't go to takin' a house ; 
for a gentleman and his wife could board a great 
deal cheaper than they could keep house ; — but 
then that girl was nothin' but a child, and 
wonkln't think of bein' married this five year. 
They was good boarders, both of 'em, paid regu- 
lar, and was as pooty a couple as she ever laid 
eyes on. 

To come back to what I began to speak 

of before, — the divinity-student was exercised in 



378 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

his mind about the Little Gentleman, and, in the 
kindness of his heart, — for he was a good young 
man, — and in the strength of his convictions, — 
for he took it for granted that he and his crowd 
were right, and other folks and their crowd were 
wrong, — he determined to bring the Little Gen- 
tleman round to his faith before he died, if he 
could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he 
should be pleased to visit him and have some 
conversation with him ; and received for answer 
that he would be welcome. 

The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, 
and had a somewhat remarkable interview with 
him, which I shall briefly relate, without attempt- 
ing to justify the positions taken by the Little 
Gentleman. He found him weak, but calm. Iris 
sat silent by his pillow. 

After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student 
said, in a kind way, that he was sorry to find 
him in failing health, that he felt concerned for 
his soul, and was anxious to assist him in mak- 
ing preparations for the great change awaiting 
him. 

I thank you, Sir, — said the Little Gentleman; 
— permit me to ask you, what makes you think 
I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do 
anything to help me. Sir? 

I address you only as a fellow-man, — said the 
divinity-student, — and therefore a fellow-sinner. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 379 

I am not a man, Sir! — said the Little Gentle- 
man. — I was born into this world the "wreck of a 
man, and I shall not be judged with a race to 
which I do not belong. Look at this I — he said, 
and held up his withered arm. — See there ! — and 
he pointed to his misshapen extremities. — Lay 
your hand here! — and he laid his own on the 
region of his misplaced heart. — I have known 
nothing of the life of your race. When I first 
came to my consciousness, I found myself an ob- 
ject of pity, or a sight to show. The first strange 
child I ever remember hid its face and would not 
come near me. I was a broken-hearted as well as 
broken-bodied boy. I grew into the emotions of 
ripening youth, and all that I could have loved 
shrank from my presence. I became a man in 
years, and had nothing in common with manhood 
but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a 
worn-out race, and I shall go down alone into the 
dust, out of this world of men and women, with- 
out ever knowing the fellowship of the one or the 
love of the other. 1 will not die with a lie rat- 
tling in my throat. If another state of being has 
anything worse in store for me, I have had a long 
apprenticeship to give me strength that I may 
bear it. I don't believe it. Sir! I have too much 
faith for that. God has not left me wholly with- 
out comfort, even here. I love this old place 
where I was born ; — the heart of the world beats 



380 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

under the three hills of Boston, Sir! I love this 
great land, with so many tall men in it, and so 
many good, noble women. — His eyes tm-ned to 
the silent figm'e by his pillow. — I have learned 
to accept meekly what has been allotted to me, 
but I cannot honestly say that I think my sin 
has been greater than my suffering. I bear the 
ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations 
in my single person. I never drew a breath cf 
air nor took a step that was not a punishment 
for another's fault. I may have had many wrong 
thoughts, but I cannot have done many wrong 
deeds, — for my cage has been a narrow one, and 
I have paced it alone. I have looked through the 
bars and seen the great world of men busy and 
happy, but I had no part in their doings. I have 
known what it was to dream of the great pas- 
sions ; but since my mother kissed me before she 
died, no woman's lips have pressed my cheek, — 
nor ever will. 

The young girl's eyes glittered with a sud- 
den film, and almost without a thought, but with 
a warm human instinct that rushed up into her 
face with her heart's blood, she bent over and 
kissed him. It was the sacrament that washed 
out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I 
should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her. 

The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only 
tear any of us ever saw him shed. 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 381 

The divinity-student rose from his place, and, 
turning away from the sicli man, walked to the 
other side of the room, where be bowed his head 
and was stiil. All the questions he had meant to 
ask had faded from his memory. The tests he 
had prepared by which to judge of his fellow- 
creature's fitness for heaven seemed to have lost 
their virtue. He could trust the crippled child of 
sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The kiss of the 
fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, 
that angels watched over him whom he was pre- 
suming but a moment before to summon before 
the tribunal of his private judgment. 

Shall I pray with you ? — he said, after a pause. 
— A little before he would have said, Shall I 
pray /or you?— The Christian religion, as taught 
by its Founder, is full of sentiment. So we must 
not blame the divinity-student, if he was over- 
come by those yearnings of human sympathy 
which predominate so much more in the sermons 
of the Master than in the writings of his succes- 
sors, and which have made the parable of the 
Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it 
has been the stumbling-block of all exclusive doc- 
trines. 

Pray! — said the Little Gentleman. 

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, 
that God would look on his servant lying helpless 
at the feet of his mercy; that he would remember 



382 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

his long years of bondage in the flesh : that he 
would deal gently with the bruised reed. Thou 
hast visited the sins of the fathers upon this their 
child. Oh, turn away from hirn the penalties of 
his own transgressions I Thou hast laid upon 
him, from infancy, the cross which thy stronger 
children are called upon to take up ; and now 
that he is fainting under it, be Thou his stay, 
and do Thou succor him that is tempted! Let 
his manifold infirmities come between him and 
Thy judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his 
eyes are not opened to all thy truth, let thy com- 
passion lighten the darkness that rests upon him, 
even as it came through the word of thy Son to 
blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside, beg- 
ging J 

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the 
same subdued tone of tenderness. In the preserrce 
of helpless suffering, and in the fast-darkening 
shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his 
Christian humanity, and cared more about con- 
soling his fellow-man than maldng a proselyte of 
him. 

This was the last prayer to which the Little 
Gentleman ever listened. Some change was rap- 
idly coming over him during this last hour of 
which I have been speaking. The excitement of 
pleading his cause before his self-elected spiritual 
adviser, — the emotion which overcame him, when 



THE PROFE&SOE AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 383 

the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her 
feelings and pressed her lips to his cheek, — the 
thoughts that mastered him while the divinity- 
student poured out his soul for him in prayer, 
might well hurry on the inevitable moment. When 
the divinity-student had uttered his last petition, 
commending him to the Father through his Son's 
intercession, he turned to look upon him before 
leaving his chamber. His face was changed.— 
There is a language of the human countenance 
which we all understand without an interpreter, 
though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage 
that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dia- 
lect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, 
by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the 
fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening 
tints, by the contracted brow, .by the dilating 
nostril, we know that the soul is soon to leave its 
mortal tenement, and is already closing up its 
windows and putting out its fires. — Such w^as 
the aspect of the face upon which the divinity- 
student looked, after the brief silence which fol- 
lowed his prayer. The change had been rapid, 
though not that abrupt one which is liable to 
happen at any moment in these cases. — The sick 
man looked towards him. — Farewell, — he said. 
— I thank you. Leave me alone with her. 

When the divinity-student had gone, and the 
Little Gentleman found himself alone with Iris, 



384 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from it, 
suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique- 
looking key, — the same key I had once seen him 
holding. He gave this to her, and pointed to a 
carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that 
had so attracted my curious eyes and set me 
wondering as to what it might contain. 

Open it, — he said, — and light the lamp. — The 
young girl walked to the cabinet and milocked 
the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with 
black velvet, against which stood in white relief 
an ivory crucifix. A silver lamp hung over it. 
She lighted the lamp and came back to the bed- 
side. The dying man fixed his eyes upon the 
figure of the dying Saviom*. — Give me your 
hand, — he said ; and Iris placed her right hand in 
his left. So they remained, until presently his 
eyes lost their meaning, though they still remained 
vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he 
held the young girl's hand firmly, as if it were 
leading him through some deep-shadowed valley 
and it was all he could cling to. But presently 
an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, 
and his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as 
if she were wedged in an engine of torture. She 
pressed her lips together and sat still. The in- 
exorable hand helcf her tighter and tighter, until 
she felt as if her own slender fingers would be 
crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 385 

of the Inqnisitioii she was suffering, and she could 
not stir from her place. Then, in her great an- 
guish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying 
figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and 
feet and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that 
she also must suffer uncomplaining. In the mo- 
ment of her sharpest pain she did not forget the 
duties of her tender office, but dried the dying 
man's moist forehead with her handkerchief, even 
while the dews of agony were glistening on her 
own. How long this lasted she never could tell. 
Time and thirst are two things you and I talk 
about; but the victims whom holy men and 
righteous judges used to stretch on their engines 
knew better what they meant than you or I! — 
What is that great bucket of water for? said the 
Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed 
on the rack. — For you to drink^ — said the torturer 
to the little woman. — She could not think that it 
would take such a flood to quench the fire in her 
and so keep her alive for her^ confession. The 
torturer knew better than she. 

After a time not to be counted in minutes, as 
the clock measures, — without any warning, — there 
came a swift change of his features ; his face 
turned white, as the waters whiten when a sud- 
den breath passes over their still surface; the mus- 
cles instantly relaxed, and Iris, released at once 
from her care for the sufferer and from his uncon- 

17 



386 THE PROFESSOR AT TEL fiREAKFAST-TABLE. 

scious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry, — 
the only utterance of her long agony. 

Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the 
iron gates of the Copp's Hill burial-ground. You 
love to stroll round among the gra\^s that crowd 
each other in the thickly peopled soil of that 
breezy summit. You love to lean on the free- 
stone slab which lies over the bones of the 
Mathers, — to read the epitaph of stout Wil- 
liam Clark, "Despiser of Sorry Persons and little 
Actions," — to stand by the stone grave of sturdy 
Daniel Malcolm and look upon the splintered slab 
that tells the old rebel's story, — to kneel by the 
triple stone that says how the three Worthylakes, 
father, mother, and young daughter, died on the 
same day and lie buried there ; a mystery ; the 
subject of a moving ballad, by the late Benjamin 
Franklin, — as may be seen in his autobio- 
graphy, which will explain the secret of the triple 
gravestone; though the old philosopher has made 
a mistake, unless the stone is wrong. 

Not very far from that you will find a fair 
mound, of dimensions fit to hold a well-grown 
man. I will not tell you the inscription upon the 
stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish 
you to be sm'e of the resting-place of one who 
could not bear to think that he should be known 
as a cripple amon^ the dead, after being pointed 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 387 

at SO long among the living. There is one sign, 
it is true, by whicli, if you have been a sagacious 
reader of these papers, you will at once know it; 
but I fear you read carelessly, and must study 
them more diligently before you will detect the 
hint to which I allude. 

The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to 
lie, among the old names and the old bones of 
the old Boston people. At the foot of his resting- 
place is the river, alive with the wings and anten- 
nae of its colossal water-insects ; over opposite are 
the great war-ships, and the heavy guns, which, 
when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies ; 
and in the steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are 
the sweet chimes which are the Boston boy's 
Ranz des Vaches, whose echoes follow him all the 
world over. 

In Pace! 

I told you a good while ago that the Little 
Gentleman could not do a better thing than to 
cave all his money, whatever it might be, to the 
young girl who has since that established such a 
claim upon him. He did not, however. A con- 
siderable bequest to one of our public institutions 
keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The 
telescope through which he was fond of watching 
the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which 
had been the source of such odd fancies on my 



888 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

part, is now the property of a Western College. 
You smile as you think of rny taking it for a 
fleshless human figure, when I saw its tube point- 
ing to the sky, and thought it was an arm, under 
the white drapery thrown over it for protection. 
So do I smile now; I belong to the numerous 
class who are prophets after the fact, and hold 
my nightmares very cheap by daylight. 

I have received many letters of inquiry as to 
the sound resembling a woman's voice, which oc- 
casioned me so many perplexities. Some thought 
there was no question that he had a second apart- 
ment, in which he had made an asylum for a 
deranged female relative. Others were of opinion 
that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" 
with patriarchal tendencies, and I have even been 
censured for introducins: so Oriental an element 
into my record of boarding-house experience. 

Come in and see me, the Professor, some even- 
ing when I have nothing else to do, and ask me 
to play you TartinVs DeuiPs Sonata on that ex- 
traordinary instrument in my possession, well known 
to amateurs as one of the master-pieces of Joseph 
Gaarnerius. The vox humana of the great Haerlem 
organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the 
organ of the Cambridge chapel might be mistaken 
in some of its tones for a human voice ; but I 
think you never heard anything come so near the 
cry of a prima donna as the A string and the E 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 389 

string of this instrument. A single fact will illus- 
trate the resemblance. I was executing some 
tours de force upon it one evening, when the 
policeman of our district rang the bell sharply, 
and asked what was the matter in the house. He 
had heard a woman's screams, — he was sure of 
it. I had to make the instrument sing before his 
eyes before he could be* satisfied that he had not 
heard the cries of a woman. This instrument 
was bequeathed to me by the Little Gentleman. 
Whether it had anything to do with the sounds I 
heard coming from his chamber, you can form, 
your own opinion ; — I have no other conjecture 
to offer. It is not true that a second apartment 
with a secret entrance was found; and the story 
of the veiled lady is the invention of one of the 
Reporters. 

Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he 
died a Catholic. She had seen the crucifix, and 
believed that he prayed on his knees before it. 
The last circumstance is very probably true ; in- 
deed, there was a spot worn on the carpet just 
before this cabinet which might be thus accounted 
for. Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, 
should not love to look on that divine image of 
blameless suffering, I cannot see ; on the contrary, 
it seems to me the most natural thing in the 
world that he should. But there are those who 
want to make private property of everything, and 



390 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

can't make up their minds that people who don't 
think as they do should claim any interest in that 
infinite compassion expressed in the central figure 
of the Christendom which includes us all. 

The divinity-student expressed a hope before 
the boarders that he should meet him in heaven. 

— The question is, whether he'll meet you^ — said 
the young fellow John, rather smartly. The di- 
vinity-student hadn't thought of that. 

However, he is a worthy young man, and I 
trust I have shown him in a kindly and respectful 
Jight. He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he 
is about to marry the sister of an old friend, — 
the Schoolmistress, whom some of us remember, 

— and as all sorts of expensive accidents happen 
to young married ministers, he will be under 
bonds to the amount of his salary, which means 
starvation, if they are forfeited, to think all his 
days as he thought when he was settled, — unless 
the majority of his people change with him or in 
advance of him. A hard case, to which nothing 
could reconcile a man, except that the faithful 
discharge of daily duties in his personal relations 
with his parishioners will make him useful enough 
in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to 
exist before he has reached middle age. 

Iris went into mourning for the Little 

Gentleman. Although, as I have said, he left the 
bulk of his property, by will, to a public institu- 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 391 

tion, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of 
various pieces of property as tokens of kind re- 
membrance. It was in this way I became the 
possessor of the wonderful instrument I have 
spoken of, which had been purchased for him out 
of an Italian convent. The landlady was com- 
forted with a small legacy. The following extract 
relates to Iris : " in consideration of her mani- 
fold acts of kindness, but only in token of grate- 
ful remembrance, and by no means as a reward 
for services which cannot be compensated, a cer- 
tain messuage, with all the land thereto appertain- 
ing, situate in Street, at the North End, so 

called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the 
house in which I was born, but now inhabited 
by several families, and known as * the Rookery.' " 
Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the red- 
jewelled ring. The funeral or death's-head ring 
was buried with him. 

It was a good while, after the Little Gentleman 
was gone, before our boarding-house recovered its 
wonted cheerfulness. There was a flavor in his 
whims and local prejudices that we liked, even 
while we smiled at them. It was hard to see the 
tall chair thrust away among useless lumber, to 
dismantle his room, to take down the picture of 
Leah, the handsome Witch of Essex, to move 
away the massive shelves that held the books he 
loved, to pack up the tube through which he used 



392 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

to study the silent star?, looking down at him 
like the eyes of dumb creatures, with a kind of 
stupid half-consciousness that did not worry him 
as did the eyes of men and women, — and hardest 
of all to displace that sacred figure to which his 
heart had always turned and found refuge, in the 
feeUngs it inspired, from all the perplexities of his 
busy brain. It was hard, but it had to be done. 

And by-and-by we grew cheerful again, and the 
breakfast-table wore something of its old look. The 
Koh-i-noor, as we named the gentleman with the 
diamond^ left us, however, soon after that "little 
mill," as the young fellow John called it, where 
he came off second best. His departure was no 
doubt hastened by a note from the landlady's 
daughter, inclosing a lock of purple hair which 
she " had valued as a pledge of affection, ere 
she knew the hoUowness of the vows he had 
breathed," speedily followed by another, inclosing 
the landlady's bilk The next morning he was 
missing, as were his limited wardrobe and the 
trunk that held it. Three empty bottles of Mrs. 
Allen's celebrated preparation, each of them as- 
serting, on its word of honor as a bottle, that its 
former contents were " not a dye," were all that 
was left to us of the Koh-i-noor. 

From this time forward, the landlady's daughter 
manifested a decided improvement in her style of 
carrying herself before the boarders. She abolished 



THE PKOFESSOR AT THE BREAKFxYST-TABLE. 393 

the odious little fiat, gummy side-curl. She left 
off various articles of "jewelry." She began to 
help her mother in some of her household duties. 
She became a regular attendant on the ministra- 
tions of a very worthy clergyman, having been 
attracted to his meetin' by witnessing a marriage 
ceremony in which he called a man and a wom- 
an a "gentleman" and a "lady," — a stroke of 
gentility which quite overcame her. She even 
took a part in what she called a Sahbath school, 
though it was held on Sunday, and by no means 
on Saturday, as the name she intended to utter 
implied. All this, which was very sincere, as I 
believe, on her part, and attended with a great 
improvement in her character, ended in her bring- 
ing home a young man, with straight, sandy hair, 
brushed so as to stand up steeply above his fore- 
head, wearing a pair of green spectacles, and 
dressed in black broadcloth. His personal aspect, 
and a certain solemnity of countenance, led me to 
think he must be a clergyman; and as Master 
Benjamin Franklin blurted out before several of 
us boarders, one day, that " Sis had got a beau," 
I was pleased at the prospect of her becoming a 
minister's wife. On inquiry, however, I found 
that the somewhat solemn look which I had no- 
ticed was indeed a professional one, but not cleri- 
cal. He was a young undertaker, who had just^^ 
succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I be-' 

17* 



894 THE TROFESSOR AT THE CREAKFAST-TABLE. 

]ieve, are going on well at this time of writing, 
and I am glad for the landlady's daughter and hei 
mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheer- 
fullest people in the world at home, as comedians 
and circus-clowns are the most melancholy in their 
domestic circle. 

As our old boarding-house is still in existence, 
I do not feel at liberty to give too minute a 
statement of the present condition of each and all 
of its inmates. I am happy to say, however, that 
they are all alive and well, up to this time. That 
kind old gentleman who sat opposite to me is 
growing older, as old men will, but still smiles be- 
nignantly on all the boarders, and has come to be 
a kind of father to all of them, — so that on his 
birthday there is alw^ays something like a family 
festival. The Poor Relation, even, has warmed 
into a filial feeling towards him, and on his last 
birthday made him a beautiful present, namely, a 
very handsomely bound copy of Blair's celebrated 
poem, " The Grave." 

The young man John is still, as he says, " in 
fust-rate fettle." I saw him spar, not long since, 
at a private exhibition, and do himself great credit 
in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a profes- 
sional gentleman of celebrity. I am pleased to 
say that he has been promoted to an upper clerk- 
ship, and, in consequence of his rise in office, has 
taken an apartment somewhat lower down than 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 395 

number "forty-'leven," as he facetiously called his 
attic. Whether there is any truth, or not, in the 
story of his attachment to, and favorable recep- 
tion by, the daughter -of the head of an extensive 
wholesale grocer's establishment, I will not venture 
an opinion; I may say, however, that I have met 
him repeatedly in company with a very well- 
nourished and high-colored young lady, who, I 
understand, is the daughter of the house in ques- 
tion. 

Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris 
did not return the undisguised attentions of the 
handsome young Marylander. Instead of fixing^ 
her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look 
upon the Little Gentleman, she would turn them 
away, as if to avoid his own. They often went 
to church together, it is true; but nobody, of 
course, supposes there is any relation between re- 
ligious sympathy and those wretched " sentimen- 
tal" movements of the human heart upon which 
it is commonly agreed that nothing better is based 
than society, civilization, friendship, the relation 
of husband and wife, and of parent and child, 
and which many people must think were singu- 
larly overrated by the Teacher of Nazareth, whose 
whole life, as I said before, was full of sentiment, 
loving this or that young man, pardoning this or 
that sinner, weeping over the dead, mourning for 
the doomed city, blessing, and perhaps kissing, the 



39 G THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

little children, — so that the Gospels are stiil cried 
over almost as often as the last work of fiction I 

But one fine June morning there rumbled up to 
the door of our boarding-house a back containing 
a lady inside and a trunk on the outside. It was 
our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the 
same who had been called by her admiring pastor 
" The Model of all the Virtues." Once a week 
she had written a letter, in a rather formal hand, 
but full of good advice, to her young charge. 
And now she had come to carry her away, think- 
ing that she had learned all she was likely to 
learn under her present course of teaching. The 
Model, however, was to stay awhile, — a week, or 
more, — before they should leave together. 

Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She 
was respectful, grateful, as a child is with a just, 
but not tender parent. Yet something was wrong. 
She had one of her trances, and became statue- 
like, as before, only the day after the Model's 
arrival. She was wan and silent, tasted nothing 
at table, smiled as if by a forced effort, and often 
looked vaguely away from those who were look- 
ing at her, her eyes just glazed with the shining 
moisture of a tear that must not be allowed to 
gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the 
place where her strange friendship had grown up 
with the Little Gentleman? Yet she seemed to 
have become reconciled to his loss, and rather to 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 397 

have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had 
been permitted to care for him in his last weary 
days. 

The Sunday after the Model's arrival, that lady 
had an attack of headache, and was obliged to 
shut herself up in a darkened room alone. Our 
two young friends took the opportunity to go to- 
gether to the Church of the Galileans. They said 
but little going, — "collecting their thoughts" for 
the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend 
the pastor preached that day one of his sern:ions 
that make us all feel like brothers and sisters, and 
his text was that affectionate one from John, " My 
little children, let us not love in word, neither in 
tongue, but in deed and in truth." When Iris 
and her friend came out of church, they were 
both pale, and walked a space without speaking. 

At last the young man said, — You and I are 
not little children. Iris ! 

She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, 
for there was something strange in the tone of his 
voice. She smiled faintly, but spoke never a 
word. 

In deed and in truth. Iris, 

What shall a poor girl say or do, when a 
strong man falters in his speech before her, and 
can do nothing better than hold out his hand to 
finish his broken sentence ? 

The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her 



398 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ungloved hand in his, — the little soft white hand 
which had ministered so tenderly and suffered so 
patiently. 

The blood came back to the young man's 
cheeks, as he lifted it to his lips, even as they 
walked there in the street, touched it gently with 
them, and said, — " It is mine ! " 

Iris did not contradict him. 



The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am 
startled to think how much has happened since 
these events I was describing. Those two young 
people would insist on having their own way 
about their own affairs, notwithstanding the good 
lady, so justly called the Model, insisted that the 
age of twenty-five years was as early as any dis- 
creet young lady should think of incurring the 
responsibilities, etc., etc. Long before Iris had 
reached that age, she was the wife of a young 
Maryland engineer, directing some of the vast 
constructions of his native State, — where he was 
growing rich fast enough to be able to decline 
that famous Russian ofifer which would have made 
him a kind of nabob in a few years. Iris does 
not write verse often, nowadays, but she some- 
times draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen 
in my Southern visits was of two children, a boy 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 399 

and girl, the youngest holding a silver goblet, like 

the one she held that evening when I — I was so 

struck with her statue-like beauty. If in the later 

summer months you find the grass marked with 

footsteps around that grave on Copp's Hill I told 

you of, and flowers scattered over it, you may be 

sure that Iris is here on her annual visit to the 

home of her childhood and that excellent lady 

I whose only fault was, that Nature had written 

I out her list of virtues on ruled paper, and for- 

I gotten to rub out the lines. 

One thing more I must mention. Being on the 
Common, last Sunday, I was attracted by the 
cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat 
youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little car- 
riage containing a stout baby. A buxom young 
lady watched them from one of the stone seats, 
with an interest which could be nothing less than 
maternal. I at once recognized my old friend, the 
young fellow whom we called John. He was de- 
lighted to see me, introduced me to " Madam,'' 
and would have the lusty infant out of the car- 
riage, and hold him up for me to look at. 

Now, then, — he said to the two-year-old, — 
show the gentleman how you hit from the shoul- 
der. — Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat 
fist straight into my eye, to his father's intense 
satisfaction. 

Fust-rate little chap, — said the papa. — Chip 



40D THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of the old block. Regl'r little Johnny, you 
know. 

I was so much pleased to find the young fellow 
settled in life, and pushing about one of " them 
little articles" he had seemed to want so much, 
that I took my " punishment " at the hands of 
the infant pugilist with great equanimity. — And 
how is the old boarding-house? — I asked. 

A 1, — he answered. — Painted and papered as 
good as new. Gahs in all the rooms up to the 
sky-parlors. Old woman's layin' up money, they 
say. Means to send Ben Franklin to college. — 
Just then the first bell rang for church, and my 
friend, who, I understand, has become a most 
exemplary member of society, said he must be off 
to get ready for meetin', and told the young one 
to " shake dada," which he did with his closed 
fist, in a somewhat menacing manner. And so 
the young man John, as we used to call him, 
took the pole of the miniature carriage, and 
pushed the small pugilist before him homewards, 
followed, in a somewhat leisurely way, by his 
pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a 
sigh and a smile after him. 

That evening, as soon as it was dark, I could 
not help going round by the old boarding-house. 
The "gahs" was lighted, but the curtains, or, 
more properly, the painted shades, were not down. 
And so I stood there and looked in along the 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 401 

table where the boarders sat at the evening meal, 
— our old breakfast-table, which some of us feel 
as if we knew so well. There were new faces at 
it, but also old and familiar ones. — The landlady, 
in a wonderfully smart cap, looking young, com- 
paratively speaking, and as if half the wrinkles 
had been ironed out of her forehead. — Her daugh- 
ter, in rather dressy half-mourning, with a vast 
brooch of jet, got up, apparently, to match the 
gentleman next her, who was in black costume 
and sandy hair, — the last rising straight from his 
forehead, like the marble flame one sometimes 
sees at the top of a funeral urn. — The Poor Re- 
• lation, not in absolute black, but in a stuff with 
\ specks of white ; as much as to say, that, if there 
were any more Hirams left to sigh for her, there 
were pin-holes in the night of her despair, through 
\which a ray of hope might find its way to an 
adorer. — Master Benjamin Franklin, grown taller 
of late, was in the act of splitting his face open 
wuth a wedge of pie, so that his features were 
seen to disadvantage for the moment. — The good 
old gentleman was sitting still and thoughtful. 
All at once he turned his face toward the win- 
dow where I stood, and, just as if he had seen 
me, smiled his benignant smile. It was a recol- 
lection of some past pleasant moment; but it fell 
upon me like the blessing of a father. 

I kissed my hand to them all, unseen as I 



402 THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

stood in the outer darkness; and as I turned and 
went iny way, the table and all around it faded 
into the realm of twilight shadows and of mid- 
night dreams. 



And so my year's record is finished. The Pro- 
fessor has talked less than his predecessor, but he 
has heard and seen more. Thanks to all those 
friends who from time to time have sent their 
messages of kindly recognition and fellow-feeling! 
Peace to all such as may have been vexed in 
spirit by any utterance these pages have repeated! 
They will, doubtless, forget for the moment the 
difference in the hues of truth we look at through 
our human prisms, and join in singing (inwardly) 
this hymn to the Source of the light we all 
need to lead us, and the warmth which alone can 
make us all brothers. 



A SUN-DAY HYMN. 

Lord of all being ! throned afar, 
Thy glory flames from sun and star; 
Centre and soul of every sphere, 
Yet to each loving heart how near ! 

Sun of our life, thy quickening ray 
Sheds on our path the glow of day ; 



THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 403 

Shir of our hope, lliy softened light 
Cheers the loiiji; watches of the iii;>lit. 

Our midniglit is thy smile ■withdrawn ; 
Our noontide is thy gracious dawn ; 
Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign ; 
All, save the clouds of sin, are thine ! 

Lord of all life, below, above, 

Whoso light is truth, whose warmth is love, 

Before thy ever-blazing throne 

AVc ask no lustre of our own. 

Grant us thy truth to make us free. 
And kindling hearts that burn for thee, 
Till all thy living altars claim 
Qne holy light, one heavenly flame ! 



THE END. 



INDEX. 



A. 



Adams, Sam, 51, 52. 

AUJL'STMKNT tO wliat WG look fit, 

197. 

Amkkic.v, the only place where 
mail is full jri'own, 101. 

A:mei!ICan, f:iith necessarily differ- 
ent from all others, 274; soil wants 
the flavor of humnnity, 308; tiie 
young, 357: youucj, 'where his 
home is, 359; iniud, water-proof- 
ing of, 372. 

A MoTiiKH's Sechet, (poem,) 159. 

Ai;k, the world's great, 275. 

Arm, left, model of at sculptor's, 
59. 

AuT harmonizes all ages, 198. 

A Sux-i>AY Hymn, (poem,) 402. 

AuTiJOUAT, the, 21, 22, 2:. 42. 

AiUo-da-fe, the last, 262. 

Axioms', the Professor's, about good 
f .Iks, 152. 

Aztecs and Fijians, reverend, 144. 



Bt.ood-globules, number of, 72. 
15oAi;i)EKS, our two new ones, 211. 
B()AHi)iN(i-H(»usE, the old, 400. 
BoAHDiNG-HoLSES, youug girls in, 

282. 
Book of Irs, 283. 
Boston, great Macadamising place, 

20; its KngUsh cliaracter, 55; the 

brain of the new world, 104; the 

grand emporium of modesty, 104; 

air, 314; danger of sneering at, 

354. 
Boy of Windermere, 202. 
l?oYs, The, (poem,) (51. 
Buaiiam's forgetful ness, 30. 
BitAix, running dry, 27; and hearty 

3t56. 
Bhaix-women and heart-women, 

187. 
Bridget, the housemaid, 389. 
Bkight, Mr., 101. 
Bkoad Ciiukch, the, 373 et seq. 
Buns, 'lection, 52. 
BuKNS Oentenarv, 32. 



B. 



Bauy, American, sucks in freedom 
with milk of nurse, 102. 

Baltimore, a civilized kind of vil- 
lage, 105; the gastronomic me- 
tropolis, 105. 

Baltimoreans, mention of two, 63. 

Battle of the Standard, 97. 

Beauty, index of a larger fact than 
wisdom, 39. 

Being, the great end of, 1, 5. 

Ben. Fraxki-in, old, 19. 

Benjamin Franklin, 386. 

Benjamlv FiiANKLix. (landlady's 
son,) 26, 167, 3^3, 401. 

Bii;riH) \Y I'oEM, 96. 

Bl(jndes, difference in their char- 
acter, 280. 



CAniNET, the old, 114. 

Cadenus, captivating Stella and 
Vanessa, 111. 

Calef, liobert, his book burned, 
10. 

Cavern under the road, sound from, 
225. 

Ciiannixg, Dr., 101. 

CiiANNiNG, Parson, 19. 

Check-book, 27. 

Chelsea 15each, gathering of ani- 
mals on, 207. 

Chess-i'layers, how nicely match- 
ed, 210. 

Children, scalded to death by 
drinking from teakettle spouts, 
209; healthy and sickly, 244. 



406 



INDEX. 



CnoiCE of a physician, 180. 

Chl'kch of St. "Polycarp, 265 et seq. ; 
of the Galileans, 269 H se<]., 397. 

CiviLi/ATio.N, its de?nenti((, 13. 

Ci.AiiK, Will am, his epitaph, 386. 

Clkkgy, their part in civiliza- 
tion, 9. 

Clei'.gymax, choice of, 181. 

Club-koo'i, 11. 

Coat, forcing one on a stranger, 31. 

Cdixcidkxcks of thoughts, 70. 

Cold, damp hands, their effect, 89. 

College dormitory, awful breach 
in walls of, 236. 

CoMisAT, pugilistic, 351. 

CoxscioL'sxEss that persons are 
looking at ii?, 196. 

CoXSEKVATIVE, 18. 

Consistency, 41. 

Coi'p's Hill, 3; burial-gi'ound, 386. 

Coughs, ungrateful things, 165. 

CouNTEHi'AiJTS, exact, cannot wait 
for, 361. 

CouxTHY-BOYS grown rich men, how 
to detect, 55. 

Cbeeds, medical, supposed enforce- 
ment of, 140 et seq. 

CiUTics, made from Authors' chips, 
32. 

CuooKED Footpath, The, (poem,) 
128. 



D. 



Dance of Death, 334. 

Dancing and bobbing, 27. 

Daniel Malcolm, his grave-stone, 
3, 386. 

Dai:k, fancies in the, 341. 

Dauwin, Dr., 102. 

Deak-mute child, expression of, 
288. 

Death-ded Literature, 367 et seq. 

Death, befoi-e expiring, 347; the 
white fruit called, 349; signs of, 
383. 

Deity, the, in books and the uni- 
ver^e, 13. 

DEPOLAitizATioN of sacrcd books, 
146, 147, 158. 

De Sauty, (poem,) 33. 

" Devil's footsteps," 235. 

DiAPiiuAGM, moral eflects of dis- 
ease above and below, 370, 

Diction A ky, Boston, 50; Richard- 
son's, 55 ; Dictionaries, war of, 54, 
55. 



Dido, 76. 

Divinity-Student, 26, 98, 136, 163 

d seq., 377 et seq. 
DOWDYISM, 171. 



E. 



Ear-rings, their suggestions, 124. 

Earth, a great factor^'-wheel, 154. 

Eau-de-vie de Dantzic, 

Ectopia cordis, 326. 

Editorials, furnished by friends, 

211. 
Ehud, 149. 
Englishman, conversation with, 43; 

thinks as he likes, 101. 
Epeolatry, 147. 
Epithets, worn out, 188. 
Equilibrium, we cannot rest in, 

347. 
Esther, 171. 



F. 



Facts, remote, collision of, 69. 

Faith, American, necessarily dif- 
ferent from all others, 274; self- 
reliance, 117. 

Family-resemblances, 242. 

Fancies frighten us more than be- 
liefs, 204. 

Fashion, an attempt to realize art, 
190. 

Fight of Harry and the butcher, 64. 

Finnegass, Henry, Esq., 394. 

Fits of easy transmission, 30. 

Flambeaux of life, puffed out, 67. 

Flamingo, the, 201. 

Flattery, acted better than spo- 
ken, 171. 

Flournoy, J. J., his Dissertation, 6. 

Food of child, sweetened by Na- 
ture, 83. 

Forests, built of air, 83. 

Frederick, our, 21. 

Freethinker, a term of reproach 
in England, 102. 

Furniture, our ancient, 237. 



G. 



Gahs, the boarding-house lighted 

with, 400. 
Gayatri, the, 9. 



INDEX. 



407 



Genius, slimilJ marry chai*acter, 
362; as a fountain, 364; has truth- 
fulness as its essence, 366. 

Gentlkman and Lady fur man and 
woni;in, 183. 

Gkokgks, on;-, 21. 

GiKT enterprises, 239. 

GixGKUBKEAu-UAUuiT exprcssion, 
24. 

GiKL, beautiful voung one, a terrible 
fact, 222. 

GooD-BKEEDiNG is sm'face-Cliris- 
tianity, 167. 

GkaveL clean, the best of ano- 
dynes,' 334. 

GiJKAT Secret, the, 223 et seq., 227. 

GnEAT Teackei;, the, loved to talk, 
at meat, 40. 

Gkeeiv, the young, 357. 

GuLE-sruEAM, the, 18. 



H. 



Haxcock House, 52. 
HAiiw, 55. 

Hair of Professor's classmate, sin- 
gular change in, 100. 
Hair-si'Ring, pulling it out of 

watch, 53. 
Hating ourselves as we hate our 

neighbors, 343. 
Heart, atrophy of, women subject 

to, 314; latent caloric from, 363. 
Hercules, rehearsing the part of 

112. 
Hei!EDITARy infirmities, 25. 
Heresy, the word little used, 148. 
Heroism of fashionable people, 176 

et seq. 
"Hiram," 117, 120. 
HOLYOKE, Dr., 10. 
H<)M(Eopathy, 14. 
Hopkins, Sam, 19. 
Horses, friskiness of in November, 

17. 
Hottentot acquaintance of the 

author, 100. 
House, on fire, how we know it, 1 99 ; 

the haunted, 204. 
Hue, his story of Chinese talkers, 37. 
Hymn of Tkust, (poem,) 356. 



I. 



Ideas held antagonistically and 
spontaneously, 102, 



I i.ovE Y'ou, all that many women 
have to tell, 227. 

IxDE.v, expurgatorious, 157. 

IxDiAN, the, wliat he is, 308. 

Indians, a provisional race. 104. 

Infirmities, tendency to refer to 
t!iem, 119. 

Insanity, most prevalent where 
there is most active intelligence, 
274. 

Iris, 27, 67, 74; (story of,) 110, 121, 
125, 173, 215, 217, 218, 223, 226, 
229, 232, 262 et seq., 281 et seq., 
298, 304, 315, 318, 335 et seq., 343, 
366, 380, 390, 395 et seq., 397, 398. 

Iius, iiEU Book, (poem,) 285. 



Jeddo, moat at, 13. 

Jeremy Bentiiam's logic, 238. 

Jeunesse three of New York, 108. 

" Jewelry," 27. 

John, voung man called, 4, 16, 22, 
52, 53, 98, 99, 172, 208, 212, et seq.^ 
233, 257, 258, 278, 342, 394, 399. 

Jonathan Kdwahds, 143. 

Judicial character not captivating 
in females, 127. 

Justice, abstract, love of, 188. 



K. 



Kent, his affectation of bluntness,37. 

Kiss, Alain Chartier's, 338. 

Knocking down, illusions respect- 
ing, 351. 

Knowledge, leaking in and out 
of, 18. 

" Kon-i-NooR," the, 20, 26, 53, 98 
et seq.. 121, 217, 233, 350 et sej., 
392. 



L. 



" Lamia," 206. 

Landlady, 122, 257, 259, 316, 377, 

401. 
Landlady's daughter, 27, 354, 

393, 401. 
Language, a solemn thing, 53. 
Law, barbarism in, 133. 
LAY-rREACHER, senuou by, 9. 
" L. B.," 12, 23, 25. 
Leah, the witch of Essex, 391. 



408 



INDEX. 



Learned professions, tlie three, 
eineroinj; from barbarisin, 132. 

LiXTUHK-itoo.M, laws of, 14t5, 155. 

LKTTKii from u youns girl, 312. 

LiBUAKY, u mental clieinbt's shop, 
31. 

LiFK, a bundle of what, 1; adjusted 
for men, 313. 

LiTTLK Ii«)sro.\, 25, 215, 278. 

LiTTMi children to love one another, 
397. 

Little Gentleman, the, 2, 12, 49, 
57, 58, 59, 97, 109 et seq., 123, 125, 
149 et seq.. 216. 229, 2:^2, 234, 258, 
260, 261, 273 et seq., 315, 318, 324 
et seq., 343 et seq., 349, .355, 379. 

Lives cut rose-diamond-fashion the 
truest, 41. 

Living Skeleton, 166. 

L' Gic of young children, 264. 

Lt)NG trains in the street, 193 et 
seq. 

Love, m'agnets, 201; signs of, 360. 

LUCUETIA, 74. 



M. 

Madam Blaize, 291. 
Maelzel's automaton, 20. 
Ma(;nolia, grows at Cape Ann, 
Malcol:m, Captain Daniel, 3. 
Man, his creation involved that of 

woman, 63. 
Mannehs, maxims concerning, 175. 
Mahuiage, young man called John 

discourses of, 214. 
Mautineau, Mr., 101. 
Makylandehs, ripen well, 63. 
Matheu, Cotton, 12, 144. 
Mathek, Increase, burned Calef's 

book, 10. 
Medicine, plague that fell on it, 14; 

barbarism of, 132. 
Meet'n'-iiouse, Bosting, 4. 
Mental movement in three parts, 

46. 
JIental reactions with life, 29. 
Midsummer, (poem,) 284. 
Milton's time of writing, 30. 
Mind forms neutral salts with cei*- 

tain elements, 31; compared to a 

circus-riiler, 47. 
" Model of all the Viktues," 

tlie, 6U, 88 et seq., 126, 168, 183, 

187, 396, 397, 399. 
MoLLUSK, eggs of a, 323. 



Moral surgery, 143. 

MoiiiEK, old man's recollections of 
a young, 231; American, her 
apron-strings, wiiat made of, 
359. 

Mouse, what it is, 354. 

Mrs. Allen's Preparation, not a 
(hje, 100. 

MuG(iLKTONiANS, their odd way of 
dealing with people, 371. 

Musk-deer, not intimate with civet- 
cat, 362. 

AIvsTERiES made of plain matters, 
324. 



N. 



Nature kind to her poorest chil- 
dren, 111; always applying YC- 
agents to character, li3. ' 

Nekvousness, 321. 

Ne' York, 106; its characteristics, 
107. 



0. 



Ocean-cable literature, 33. 

Old Gentleman opposite, 26, 109, 
230, 350,401. 

Old W'ohld, its soil thoroughly 
humanized, 309. 

Old- World and New-World civili- 
zation, 44. 

Old-Wohld locks and canals, 372. 

O'M, the Hindoo word, 8. 

OPENIN(i OF THE I'lANO, TlIE, 

(poem,) 92. 
Opinions of u man worth more than 

his arguments, 146. 
Otis, .lim, 19. 
Outsiders and insiders, 377. 



P. 



Park-Street Church, 13. 

Parallax of truths, 9. 

Passkjns, the pale ones arc fiercest, 

337. 
Pehsons born too far north, 305. 
Philadelphia, its characteristics, 

106. 
Piiii^LiPS and Denegri, 3. 
Phil- sopiihal habits, man of, his 

disadvantage, 338. 
Phrenological experiences, 246 

et seq. 



INDEX. 



409 



Phrenology, lecture on, 249. 
Pictures and casts in Professor's 
study, 36. 

PiRANESI, 300. 

PoE, Edgar, talks against Boston, 
355 ; ends unfortunately, 355. 

Poets old before their time, 301; 
in America, 308. 

Polarized words, 8. 

Poor Relation, 26, 27, 115, 117, 
153, 163, 259, 342, 350, 394, 401. 

Portrait of the Witch of Essex, 329. 

Portrait-painting, 239 et seq. 

Professor, the, a good listener, 
21; whether anything is left for 
him, 29; his theological talk, 129 
et seq., 136 ; loves to go to church, 
269 ; his farewell address, 402 ; his 
belief when 5823 years old, 264. 

Professors cling to their chairs, 
17. 

Prophets of evil, 317. 

Protestantism, unpoetical side of, 
225. 

PUDDINGSTONE, 322. 



Quality, the, 168. 

Quarrelling among our literary 
people imcommon, 93. 

Questions addressed to the Profes- 
sor, 257. 

Quintain, the, 151. 



R. 



Paces, provisional, 103. 

Railroad village and the pyra- 
mids, 310. 

Red-crayon sketch of humanity, 
Indian is, 104. 

Reformers, the, 255. 

Religion, our, must be American- 
ized, 260. 

Reversed current in flow of 
thought and emotion, 185. 

Rich people, the most agreeable 
companions, 171; natures in fash- 
ionable society, 189. 

Ring, the funeral, 11. 

Robinson of Leyden, (poem,) 221. 

Rome and Reason, 155. 

"Rookery," the, 391. 

Rousseau, 309. 

18 



S. 



Saint Anthony, the Reformer, 255, 

Salem, 53. 

Savate, the, 66. 

Science, or knowledge, not the 
enemy of religion, 142. 

Schoolmistress, the, 213, 390. 

SCULPIN, the, 2, 22, 23. 

Sentiment, Christianity fuU of, 
381, 395. 

" Sentimental " religion, 156. 

Sewall, Chief Justice, 12. 

Seward, Mr., 101. 

Shimei, Rab-shakeh, etc., 151, 
159. 

Soap, the Koh-i-noor's present of, 
123. 

Soul, Nature's preparations for un- 
earthing, 348. 

Sounds, in Little Gentleman's room, 
203, 218, 277; strange, heard in 
night, 206. 

Spiritualism, 15 ; its effects, 135. 

Spelling, Boston, 51. 

Stars-of-Bethlehem, the, 311. 

State House, Boston, 68, 354, 
855. 

Steam-tug, the little, 365. 

Stethoscope, 325. 

Store-room, the dark, 237. 

Strong, the, hate the weak, 23. 

St. Saba, Monastery of, 156. 

Suicide, laws of, 210. 

Sulphur and supplication, 139. 

" Summons for Sleepers," 148. 

Sun-day Hymn, (poem,) 402. 

Sunsets, Boston, 103. 

Surgeons, said to grow hard-heart- 
ed, 331. 

Surprise-parties, 94 et seq. 



T. 



Table, position of boarders at, 

26. 
Tadpoles, confined in the dark, 

305. 
Talent and genius, 302 et seq. 
Talk of pretty women, 38. 
Telescope, the Little Gentleman's 

388. 
Temperance Song, the Professor's, 

41. 
Temptation, the Professor's, 337. 
Tennent, Rev. Wilham, 224. 



410 



INDEX. 



Theologian, the heart makes the, 

154. 
Theologians, liable to become 

hard-hearted, 332. 
Theology, b:n-barism in, 133. 
Thinking what we like, 148, 
Thomas and Jeremiah, 21. 
Thought, the ashes of thinking, 30. 
Thoughts, flow in layers, 45; no 

space between consecutive, 47. 
Three-hilled city, the, against 

the seven-hilled city, 98. 
Three Maiden Sisters, book of 

the, 289. 
Time and thirst, 385. 
Transplantation necessary for 

some young natures, 306. 
Trick of the Boys at Commons, 71. 
Trtgamy, 6. 
Tripod of life, 328. 
Trotting matches, cabalistic phra- 
seology of, 209. 
Truth, bandaging and unbandaging 

of, 49 ; the Ocean of, 116 ; is tough, 

137 ; fencing in of, 373 ; Smithate 

and Bi-ownate of, 375. 
Turtle, effect of live coal on his 

back, 35. 
Tutor, the old Latin, 74 et seq. 
Tutors die by starvation, 77. 
Two and two do not make four in 

hereditary descent, 85. 
Two Streams, The, (poem,) 192. 



U. 



Underbred people tease the sick 

and dying, 181. 
Undertaker, the young, 393. 
Under the Violets, (poem,) 319. 



V. 



Vessels, touching each other, 69. 
View, persons who cannot pro- 
nounce, 190. 
Virginia, 75. 



Voice, effect of, 56; woman's, sound 

resembling, 388. 
Vox humana stop, 205. 



W. 



Walrus, Neighbor, his flowers, 312. 

Warren, Joe, 19. 

Washington societies, lOJ. 

Water of crystallization, books and 
pictures are to scholars, 78, 

Wealth, its permanence, 190. 

" Webster's Unabridged," 49, 50. 

What men women love, 200. 

What one would most dislike to 
tell, 113. 

Whiskey, its virtues, 166. 

Wicks, three, to lamp of life^ 327. 

Wilkes, John, 111. 

Will, the " Autocrat" on, 43. 

Wine at dinner, its theoretical use, 
40. 

Wolves, stones on graves to keep 
them off, 331. 

Woman, the Messiah of a new Reve- 
lation, 157. 

WojiEN can shape a husband out of 
anything, 198; have a sixth sense, 
336; and girls we cannot reason 
with, 345. 

Word, a, the saddle of a thought, 48. 

Words, Boston, 51. 

Wordsworth, 202. 

Worthylakes, 3; their triple 
gravestone, 386. 



Y. 



Yankees are a kind of gypsies, 310. 
Yorkshire groom, his discomfiture, 

65. 
Young man John, 399. 
Young Marylander, 26, 55, 56, 

57, 108, 234, 267, 344, 359, 366 

897, 398. 
Young mothers, poisoning of, 150. 
Youth and Age, tests be: ween, 71. 



H 13 89 



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DEC 88 



N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 




